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LESSONS 



PSYCHOLOGY 



E. HELEN HANNAHS, A. B. 

Teacher of Psychology 

IN THE 

New York State Normal College, Albany 



PRESS OF 

BRANDOW PRINTING COMPANY 

ALBANY, N. Y. 

1908 



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Copyright, igo8 
By E. Helen Hannahs 



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PREFACE 

THE lessons are designed particularly for the use of 
teachers and those who are studying to be teachers. 
The principles of psychology, however, as here presented 
show the bearing of the subject in the affairs of daily life, 
and for this reason it is hoped that the book will be of 
interest as well to others. 

Though it has not been customary to follow the plan 
of the Lesson-Unit in teaching above the grades, I have 
ventured to arrange my material according to it, since 
that material is for the most part elementary. And long 
experience has confirmed my opinion that it is helpful in 
all work in the classroom to follow in spirit, at least, each 
day the general plan of the three steps of preparation, pre- 
sentation, and application. 

In using the lessons in the classroom teachers will find 
many of them as given too long for one day 's work. A week 
is not too much time to spend in reaching, for example, the 
law of associations here developed in the first lesson. For the 
formulation of this law pupils will be interested to trace 
in class and outside many trains of association and to talk 
about them familiarly as they do about the facts of nature 
or mathematics. And in most of the subjects, indeed, 
pupils may spend profitably a much longer time than one 
lesson in watching, giving, and discussing their experience 
before they are led to generalize. 

A great amount of practice is necessary, moreover, to 
accustom one's self, say, to trace trains of association, to 
find first members, to realize when one has omitted mem- 
bers, — in short, to become really familiar with the process 
of watching the stream of thought from the standpoint of 



4 Preface 

associations and to establish the habit of observation. The 
lessons are quite without meaning unless this detailed ob- 
servation is persistently continued. 

Psychology to be of value to a teacher or to any one 
else must be a habit of mind. Such a knowledge as one 
gains in reading a technical book on the subject when 
one says of a fact, " Yes; that is true; I'll remember it," 
might be called an assenting knowledge. A few facts 
gained in this way no doubt become available in guiding 
daily life, but not a large enough number to pay for the 
time spent in this mode of study. 

If, on the other hand, a person sets earnestly to work 
to master his own thought processes, the ways of his mind, 
he will soon accumulate a mass of observations, which in- 
deed '* are not in themselves science, but without which 
there is no science " for him. The kind of knowledge of 
psychology that he can make out of this material is the 
kind that is valuable, the kind that is available daily and 
hourly in the schoolroom and everywhere. It is not just 
formal, academic information about a text-book, it is 
rather knowledge of the subject in our hearts and lives- 
willed, professional wisdom. 

The lessons are offered then, not with the aim to present 
theories of psychology, nor yet to record the progress that 
has been made in the science. There has been no attempt 
even to classify the material logically. The purpose of the 
book is rather to indicate one way in which by the study of 
his own experience a person may gain a working idea of 
some of the simple, general, and commonly accepted truths 
of mind. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

Associations 

Lesson I, The Law of Associations. 10; Lesson II, A Study of Identical 
Elements in Trains of Association, 11; Lesson III, Analysis of 
Associations, 18; Lesson IV, Correlations, 21; Lesson V. Defini- 
tion of Associations, 24. 

CHAPTER II 

Sensations 

Lesson I, Definition of Sensations, 29; Lesson II, The Sense of Sound, 
35; Lesson III, The Sense of Sight, 41; Lesson IV, Taste and 
Smell, 50; Lesson V, Touch, Muscular, Temperature, and Organic 
Sensations, 55. 

CHAPTER III 

Perception 

Lesson I, Definition of Perception, 63; Lesson II, The Outer and 
Inner Orders of the Stream of Thought, 68; Lesson III, 
Inferences in Perception, 73. 

CHAPTER IV 

Memories 

Lesson I, Retention, 80; Lesson II, Reproduction, 86; Lesson III 
Recognition, 91; Lesson IV, Memory Training, 95. 

CHAPTER V 

Apperception 

Lesson I, Definition of Apperception, 102; Lesson II, Learning, 106; 
Lesson III, Teaching, 111; Lesson IV, The Lesson-Unit, 116; 
Lesson V, Training the "Powers of Observation," 122. 



6 Contents 

CHAPTER VI 

Thought 

Lesson I, The Syllogism, 125; Lesson II, Valid Syllogisms, 131; Lesson 
III, Conception, 134; Lesson IV, Induction and Deduction, 145. 

CHAPTER VII 

Attention 

Lesson I, Definition of Attention, 153; Lesson II, Control of the Atten- 
tion, 160. 

CHAPTER VIII 

Imagination 

Lesson I, Imaging and Imagination, 168; Lesson II, Cultivating Imagi- 
nation, 172. 

CHAPTER IX 

Will 

Lesson I, Will Action, 184; Lesson II, Feelings, 190; Lesson III, Desires 
196; Lesson IV, Character, 203. 



Lessons in Psychology 



CHAPTER I 

ASSOCIATIONS 

Lesson I 

THE LAW OF ASSOCIATIONS 

Preparation Step.— I. There is no better place to begin 
the study of psychology than your own mind, and no bet- 
ter method to follow than that of constant observation of 
what takes place there. Suppose then that you study your 
stream of thought, say, from the standpoint of the law of 
associations. 

II. Surely you have noticed occasional trains of asso- 
ciation. To gain a working idea, however, of the law, you 
must make a business of watching what passes through 
your mind. For convenience in analyzing it, regard your 
stream of consciousness as though it were all made up of 
successive trains of associations, each one interrupting the 
preceding one, and trace, trace, trace your fleeting thoughts 
morning, noon, and night ! 

III. After having observed these trains of associations 
for a time, begin to write out lists of them. Recall the 
ideas that have helped to make your stream of thought for 
the last half hour and write them out somewhat in this 
way: (I just looked to see what time it was.) 

(1.) A visual image of the clock-face; 

(2. Thought words) Eight o'clock; I must do^ my 

errands ; 



8 Lessons in Psychology 

(3.) A secondary (recalled) visual 

image of a shop I must visit. 

Another series : 

(1.) Temperature sensations of hot 

coffee in my mouth and throat; 
(2, Thought words) How good this hot coft'ee is! 
(3. Thought words) It is such a luxury to have it hot. 

A third series: 

(1.) ' Organic sensations in my lungs; 

(2. Thought words) This room is very close; 
(3. Thought words) I'll open the window; 
(4.) Group of secondary (recalled, in- 

ner) muscular sensations mak- 
ing the idea of myself as turning 
and opening the window. 
A fourth series: 

- (1.) A group of sound sensations; 

(2. Thought words) Miss S. is opening the door; 
(3.) Group of secondary color sensations 

making an image of Miss S. 
opening the door; 

(4. Thought words) She always opens the doOr so 
gently. 

Trace in this way twenty trains of association an hour. 

IV. For convenience in tracing your thoughts count each 
outer experience as No. 1. Almost always No. 2 will be 
thought words naming, or identifying No. 1. Then may 
follow secondary visual images or images in the terms of 
any sense or more thought words. We may have any number 
almost of trains of association on the same subject, and also 



Associations 9 

we may change the subject in each successive member of 
a train of associations. You will notice, moreover, that 
sometimes the series are very long, sometimes so short and 
quick, so fleeting that they hardly seem to have been in 
consciousness at all. 

V. What the relation is between brain and mind nobody 
has ever determined. It seems certain that when thoughts 
are in the mind the blood is circulating in the brain, and for 
given thoughts in consciousness the same part of the brain 
apparently is always flushed and stimulated. Do you re- 
member the appearance in the sky of the aurora horealis? 
A recent writer has likened to the motion of this flitting, 
quivering light the shimmer and play of the activity of 
blood in the brain and of its accompanying mentality, one as 
subtle as the other. But though the relation between brain 
and mind cannot be explained, one must realize that the 
sensation blue is different from the vibration of brain-cells, 
that a mental state is different from the activity of matter. 

Presentation Step.— I. When we examine the parts of 
one of these trains of association we are led to the question, 
why should one group of sensations follow another? Why, 
for example, should a certain group of color sensations 
which makes the clock face be followed by the thought 
words. It is eight o'clock? AA'^hy did I not think instead, 
It rains, or China ? 

The reason seems to be that sometime in the past I have 
had this certain grouping of color sensations in my mind 
before with the thought words, It is eight o'clock. Some- 
time before, also, I had thought, At eight o'clock I shall 
go out to do some errands. So now that I think. Eight 
o'clock, the thought follows, I must do my errands. And 
as I examine the members two and two of my trains of 
association, I find in each ease that some or all of the ele- 



10 Lessons in Psychology 

ments composing them have been in my mind together 
before; I have been conscious of them as near in previous 
time relations. 

The law of associations then is, Mental elements that 
have been together in mind before will return together 
when some of them return, or, " When part of an idea 
appears in consciousness, the whole appears." 

II. Whatever other relations may be superadded, all 
thought seems to be governed by this law. But though 
stated in the terms of ideas, the law is really a description 
of the way in which the elements of the brain and the 
body are stimulated and respond. As Professor Titchener 
says, " When two or three parts of the brain have been 
excited together, in perception, a habit of co-excitation or 
joint excitation is set up; so that if, later on, one of the 
parts is excited alone the others will be involved also,— and 
involved the more certainly, the more habitual the connec- 
tion has been in perception." 

The law is fundamentally one governing bodily elements, 
the Law of Habit. 

Application Step.— I. Watch your thoughts constantly; 
jot down lists and think the law of associations with each 
list. You cannot do this work by accident— you have to 
think about it and make an effort to do it. 

II. Watch different people to see how different their 
response is under apparently the same stimulus. Watch 
evidences of associations in children as shown in their 
speech and acts. Watch animals to see to what extent 
they are governed by the law of associations. 

III. In sleep the minimum of blood is sent to the brain 
and the mind is least active. We have not so many asso- 
ciations, " we are only a fraction of ourselves." Trace 
the associations in dreams. 



^ Associations 11 

IV. Observe associations in conversations that you carry- 
on and overhear. How much could you understand or say 
if it were not for associations! 

V. In the terms of associations, what is the process of 
reading? Is it not the process of having trains of asso- 
ciation, the first member of each of which is a visual image 
of one or more script or printed words'? There is no 
thought in a book, surely, no mental states like those in a 
mind — "All we get from a book is what we bring to it " 
arranged in new relations. 

VI. Think over the gifts or photographs you have given 
to friends lately. From the standpoint of associations, 
why did you give them? 

VII. Observe the kind of sensations that make up the 
members of the trains of association. Are there visual 
images, or groups of color sensations— so many that you 
think habitually in the terms of sight? In other woras, 
are you eye-minded? Or do you think more often in 
thought words, that is, groups of secondary sound or touch 
sensations? Determine whether your type is visual, audi- 
tory, or tactual. 

Lesson II 

A STUDY of identical ELEMENTS IN TRxUNS OF ASSOCIATION 

Preparation Step. — I. There will be suggestions for 
our work in the schematic representation of the associations 
between mental states. Let us picture these relations. 

II. Recall and write lists of trains of association that 
you have had to-day about the weather, the temperature, 
the appearance of the sky, of the mountains; those that 
you have thought about your meals, your food; those 
starting in aches and pains, in hunger and thirst ; those 
that you have noticed in connection with conversations. 



12 



Lessons in Psychology 



III. ^Yrite lists of the sensations that make up each 
member of the trains of associations : For example, 



(1. Sound sensations,; 



< 



noisy, 

crunching (made by wheels 

on snow), 
creaking, 
s(|ueaking, 
loud sounds, 
high pitched; 



r Words incipiently spoken 
(2. Thought words, ) How J in the terms of the mus- 



cold it must be ! 



(3. Secondary visual 
image, ) 






cles of the throat and 
tongue ; 



r Grays, 
J reds, 

"^ browns ( so grouped as to form 
the snow-covered street). 



and so on, for many trains. 

IV. What do you mean when you say that A's portrait 
is a good likeness, that it looks like his face? 

The face, to you, is really a group of color sensations 
arranged, or grouped in a definite way ; the portrait also 
is a group of color sensations combined as nearly as the 
artist can combine them in the same way that the similar 
colors are grouped to make A's face. There are certain 
colors and arrangements that are identical in your mind 
to the two. In an oil painting, for example, there are 
probably both colors and arrangements that are common 
to face and portrait. In a blue-print, on the other hand, 
there are no colors in comm(m, but the arrangement of 
blues may have so much that is identical with the arrange- 
ment of colors in the face that it is an excellent likeness. 



Associations 



13 



When we say that two different people resemble each 
other, we really mean that their faces, reduced to color 
elements and grouping, have certain points in common, 
certain sensations or arrangements that are identical. 

And so it is with all experiences that we call similar. 
All similarity reduces to few or many identical elements 
among diverse elemenfs. 

Presentation Step.— I. Write (a) the lists and (6) the 
elements for several trains of association somewhat as 
follows : 



(a) List: 

(1.) Visual image of a calendar; 

(2. Thought words) The eighth; I must send something 

ior M 's birthday ; 
(3.) What shall I send? 

(4.) Secondary visual image of a box 

of souvenirs ; 
(5.) I might send that pillow-cover. 

(&) The elements of this list in the order and relation 
that they came to my mind are : 



(Stream of Thought.) 



(1. Visual image of 
a calendar:) 



(3. Thought words:) 



(5. Thought words:) 



f Grays 

I reds, 

I (so grouped as 

[ to form 8.) 

f The eighth. I 
must send something 
for M's birthday. 



What shall I send? 

f Greens, grays, 
reds, browns 

I might send that 
[ pillow-cover. 



(2. Thought words:) 



(4. Secondary sight 
sensations making a 
box of souvenirs:) 



14 



Lessons in Psychology 



That is, I have now in mind as a primary experience a 
visual image of a calendar. This image is composed of 
grays so grouped as to form a figure eight. When I have 
had that grouping in mind before it was part of another 
mental state which was then completed by the thought 
words, " The eighth, I must send something for M's birth- 
day." The. thought of sending a gift had before been in 
my mind as part of another mental state which was then 
completed by the thought of deciding what I should send. 
So that now when I think, " I must send something," the 
thought follows, " AVhat shall I send?" and so on. 

The elements identical to two mental states are pictured 
as common to two braces. 

II. A second graphic analysis: 



(1. Visual Image of 
a stranger's face:) 



(3. Thought words:) 



(Stream of Thought.) 

f grays, 

flesh tints, 
I browns, grays (so 
I grouped as to make 
I part of Ruth S's face.) 



flesh colors, 
grays, 

light browns 
(so grouped as 
to make the rest 
■ of Ruth's face.) 

Ruth S. She's in 
New York. She can't 
be here; 



(2. Visual image of 
Ruth S's face:) 



(4. Thought 
words:) 



I'll look again 
more carefully. 



■In the above series I saw a stranger whose face resembled 
Ruth S's face, that is, had elements in common with it. 
When I saw the first face, ' ' quick as thought ' ' Ruth 's face 
flashed into my mind with the thoughts that followed. 



Associations 



15 



III. A third graphic analysis: 

(Stream of Thought.) 



(1. Sound sensatioDs:) 



(3. Secondary visual 
image of the snowy 
street:) 




(2. Thought words:) 



IV. Each train of associations reduces to the general 
formula, 

fa 



(I.)' 



I I (2.) 



(3.) 



(4.) 



and so on. 

The thoughts b, c, d, e, are the results in mind of the 
excitation of the brain cells b', c', d', e'. The excitation 
of the brain cells follows the path established by the law 
of habit. 

Application Step.— I. This plan of tracing and analyz- 
ing trains of association leads to closer observation of 
thoughts than that followed in the first lesson. By that plan 
members and elements may often be omitted or overlooked. 
By studying out always the elements of identity between 
each two groups, one finds a larger number of thoughts 
and thus learns more about his mind. 

II. Professor Titchener calls these identical elements 
' ' stepping stones, " as it is by means of them that we pass 
from one idea to another. Thomas Hobbes, a great Eng- 
lish philosopher, showed that it is by these common ele- 
ments that we may ' ' perceive the way of this wild ranging 



16 



Lessons in Psychology 



of the mind, and the dependence of one thought upon 
another. ' ' 

III. I may have had a hundred or more visual images of 
the capitol. But though I speak of them all as " the 
capitol," each one differs in some details from all the 
others. I do not think the same thoughts after any two of 
them. Each different visual image that I call " the capi- 
tol " has elements that have been in my mind before with 
thought words, — sometimes, perhaps, with " the east 
front ; ' ' again with, ' ' How badly discolored the south walls 
are ! ' ' And still again with, ' ' I must return that book to 
the capitol library," and so on. In each case the elements 
making the dift'erent visual images of the capitol had been 
in my mind before with the thought words that followed. 
Graphically I thought. 



(1. Visual image of 
the capitol,) 



grays. 

(grouped to make 
the east front.) 



(2. Thought words.) 



(1. Visual image of 
the capitol,) 



The east front 

f grays, 

! (grouped to make 
I the discolored 
I south side,) 

The south side 
is badly dis- 
colored 



(2. Thought words;) 



(1. Visual image of 
the capitol,) 



grays, 

(grouped to make 

the library windows.) 

I must return that 
book to the 
capitol library. 



(2. Thought words,) 



IV. We have, in other words, what might be called mul- 
tiple associations with the capitol', and not only with the 
capitol but with many, many other facts, people, and ex- 
periences of all kinds. 

The business of education may be regarded as to develop 
proper multiple associations. Study each day's lesson 



Associations 17 

that you teach with the idea of establishing the material 
in many trains of association, of " multiplying cues." 

V. What is the explanation of forgetting, say, a person 's 
name? Is it not that we cannot recall a thought having 
elements identical with the mental state of which the name 
forms a part, that we cannot get on the right train of as- 
sociation ? In other words we cannot come upon a thought 
that has been in mind before with the name. 

In our endeavor to find an identical element we go over 
the alphabet, recall the scenes and circumstances of meet- 
ing the person and all we know about him. Then perhaps 
an hour later, when we are thinking apparently of some- 
thing wholly different, we come upon the identical element, 
and there is the name ! As the witty woman in " Dr. North 
and his Friends " said, our thoughts are like Bo-Peep's 
sheep. " Let 'em alone and they'll come home, a-bringin' 
their tales behind them." 

VI. It is convenient in observing and analyzing our 
thoughts to speak of them as though they were separate 
entities, just as w^e think of the separate atoms of matter, 
Our stream of thought, however, is not broken or divided 
into units, it is itself a unit; as Professor James says, 
' ' Thought is not jointed, it flows. ' ' 

VII. I must urge you to persevere in the practice of trac- 
ing trains of association and, also, artificial as it may seem 
at first, 'in seeking the identical elements between their 
different members. There is no kind of observation and 
study that shows us so much about our mind as this study 
of associations. If you were learning botany you would 
not find it trivial or irksome to analyze many plants 
minutely. Put the same amount of effort and patience in 
this work. 



18 Lessons in Psychology 

Lesson III 

ANALYSIS OF ASSOCIATIONS 

Preparation Step.— L By describing and making ex- 
plicit the condition and process which make possible your 
present thoughts you can vary your observation of as- 
sociations. 

II. Recall trains of association that you have had about 
music heard recently; about people's voices, sounds in the 
street, in the house. Recall what you have thought while 
reading newspapers, magazines, signs, bill-boards, letters; 
on seeing pictures, buildings, landscape, a river, a hill, a 
tree, a head, a face, mannerisms, expressions, gestures. 

Watch the association of acts with thoughts; as, (1.) 
Visual image of a letter; (2.) I must mail that letter; 
(3.) I'll put it where I can see it when I go out; (4.) Sec- 
ondary muscular sensations of placing the letter on the 
desk. (1.) Primary muscular sensations of rising; (2.) 
Secondary muscular sensations of reaching out my hand 
and placing the letter on the desk. (1.) Smell sensations of 
smoke; (2.) What can be burning? (3.) I'll see. (1.) 
Muscular sensations of rising; (2.) I'll look in the outer 
hall first, — and so on. 

III. Do you remember the first time you saw moving 
pictures? An automobile? An electric launch? Recall 
your first experience in hearing a phonograph, a pianola, 
a telharmonium. 

How did you identify these experiences? Did not some 
one have to tell you what each one was? Or, had you not 
read about a pianola, for example, picturing as you read 
how it would look and sound, so that when you saw some- 
thing that looked like the picture you could think the word 
with the image again? 



Associations 



19 



Presentation Step.— I. Write (a) the list and (&) the 
schematic analysis of several series. For example, 

(a) (1.) Sound sensations of wheels creaking in the 

snow; 
(2. Thought words:) How cold it must be! 
(3.) Secondary visual image, the frosty street 

outside. 



1^ noisy sounds, crunching, 
(&) (1.) J creaking, loud, high in 
I pitch, squeaking; 

J How cold it must be ! 
grays, 
reds, 
browns. 



(2. Thought 
words : ) 



II. To make explicit the process by which it is possible 
for me to have these thoughts : 

Long ago in my childhood and many times since, I re- 
member to have heard this peculiar creaking, crunching 
sound of wheels in the snow when I have heard some one say 
and have thought, How cold it must be ! Now that I hear 
sounds of this peculiar quality again, I think (not, red 
chimneys, nor anything else, but just the thought that has 
been with this peculiar quality of sound before) How cold 
it must be! When I have thought. How cold it must be! 
before, I have seen the street as it looks on a frosty morn- 
ing. So now that I think the words. How cold it must be ! 
they are at once followed by a secondary visual image of 
the frosty street. 

III. Again, I have the series, (1. A song in parts) musi- 
cal sounds; (2.) Incipient humming of one of the parts 



20 Lessons in Psychology 

with the singer; (3. Thouoht words) This humming is 
what listening is. I'm listening to one part. 

I once learned that the process of hearing sounds, of 
listening is one of incipiently imitating the sounds in the 
throat. When I heard one part of the musical sounds, I 
incipiently reproduced the sounds in my throat ; When I 
had had the thought of hearing that voice before at a 
certain time I had thought, I '11 listen to it ; so now that I 
hum to myself with the voice, I think, This hunmiing is 
listening. I'm listening to one part. 

IV. Analyze thus many trains of association explaining 
with each two members that it is possible for them to come 
back together now because they have been together before 
and recall if possible the certain definite time when they 
were together formerly. 

Application Step.— I. Think out associations in which 
you image different acts. The thoughts, for example, of 
the words that I am to write are followed by inconceivably 
fleeting secondary groups of touch, muscular, and joint 
sensations that make before I write each word the image 
of my act in writing. These associations were established 
when I learned to write. 

II. Our muscles perform many acts for us as a result of 
established bodily associations, or habit, without conscious 
direction or with only a little thought. Watch these bodily 
associations constantly. 

III. What have you thought recently on seeing a flag? 
A steeple? College colors"? Recall the time when these 
associations were established. 

IV. Why build church steeples? What do they mean? 
Why put out flags? Of what value would a visible symbol 
be if nobody had any associations with it? 



Associations 21 

V. If there were no visible signs, monuments, memorials 
of people, events, and ideals, from the standpoint of asso- 
ciations what should we miss? 

VI. What is the value of associations to us emotionally 
and as related to interests? 

VII. What difference does the work of Burns, Scott, and 
Carlyle make in our interest in Scotland! What associa- 
tions have writers added to places in our own country? 
What associations has history established around places 
and people that you know ? 

VIII. " The man who, from poverty of mental back- 
ground, is stirred by none of these things " (associations 
that come on a visit to the homes of Milton, Wordsworth, 
and Shakespeare, to Stirling Castle,) " misses an influence 
on character and a stimulus to conduct which are of incal- 
culable value. A soldier whom I met some time ago told 
me that, when he was a young subaltern, and was getting 
slack, as he expressed it, he was pulled together by a pithy 
but effective remark of his superior officer. ' Take care,' 
he said: 'you're forgetting Wellington, and the history 
and traditions of the army.' There's many a lad who has 
been spurred to his best endeavor and restrained from a 
mean or ignoble act, by the flashing across his mind of 
the name and figure of one of his heroes in history or in 
fiction." (" Psychology for Teachers," C. Lloyd Morgan.) 

Lesson IV 

CORRELATIONS 

Preparation Step.— I. The law of habit governs the 
way in which our thoughts come back always. There is 
often, moreover, besides the relationship of mere con- 
tiguity, or nearness between mental states, another relation 
superadded. 



22 Lessons in Psychology 

II. The following lists will serve to illustrate this kind of 
relation : 

a. (1.) Smell sensations; 

(2. Thought word) perfumery; 
(3.) Where does it come from? 
(4.) Ill look around the car to see. 

6. (1.) Visual image; 

(2.) That is a young Italian girl in the seat back of me. 
(3.) Maybe she has some perfumery on. 

c. (1.) Sound sensations; 

(2. Thought words) What sweet voices those Italians 
have ! 

d. (1.) Visual image of bent handle of a mirror; 
(2.) That must be to rest the mirror on. 

e. (1.) Visual image of a young lady; 

(2.) Secondary visual image of Ruth S. ; 

(3. Thought words) Ruth S. ; But Ruth S. is in New 

York. She can't be here; 
(4.) I'll look again more closely. 

/". (1.) Visual image of the same young lady; 

(2.) No style about her hair and hat; 

(3.) Ruth is so good looking ! 

(4.) This is surely not she. 

g. (1.) Visual image of part of a pin; 

(2.) Secondary visual image of the rest of it. 

Presentation Step.— I. In a, between 1 and 2, the re- 
lation in my thought is more than just that of contiguity; 
it is one of cause and effect. Between 2 and 3, there is 
superadded the relation of source, and also in &, 2 and 3 ; 
between a, 3 and 4, the relation is purpose; between c, 1 
and 2, substance and attribute ; between d, 1 and 2, design ; 



Associations 



23 



between e, 1 and 2, resemblance ; between /, 2 and 3, con- 
trast, and between g, 1 and 2, subordination (part and 
whole). 

II. In mere nearness, contiguity of mental states, there 
is no real relation. The correlations indicated above, on 
the other hand, are real mental relations. 

III. As to their nature, they have been regarded by some 
writers as differing from contiguity in kind; by others, as 
complex evolutions of simple contiguity. Whatever their 
origin may be, correlations are real experiences, and they 
are the relations, the associations, of the higher forms of 
thought. 

IV. Because these associations face both ways (we may 
pass from cause to effect or effect to cause, from part to 
whole or whole to part) they are correlations. 

The principal correlations that the intelligence finds 
among its objects are those of: 



1. Coexistence 



2. Succession 



3. Subordination <; 



4. Resemblance 



5. Causation 

6. Design-utility. 



time 
coinherence 

time 
space 

'^ genus and species 
essence and property 
whole and part 
quantity 
proportion 

r resemblance 
' identity 
I difference 

(J. ]\r. Baldwin, 
Psychology.") 



Hand-book of 



24 Less<,)Ns in Psychology 

Application Step.— I. Watch constantly for correla- 
tions in your trains of association. 

II. Imagine a mind whose thoughts are governed by con- 
tiguity only, a stream of thought in which there are no 
correlations. 

III. Which kind of associations, contiguity or correla- 
tions, enables a parrot to talk! A child"? An adult? 

IV. Which kind is involved in learning to spelH In 
learning the facts of history, of aesthetics? In the process 
of muscular training? In playing the piano? In house- 
keeping? In banking? 

Which kind is involved in passing an examination? 
Which is required for scientific knowledge? Which kind 
is it more valuable to make, more educative? 

V. Compare your memory for facts merely contiguous 
in time and space, such as the number of days in the month, 
the position of Batavia on the map of Java, with your 
memory for facts really correlated, such as your knowledge 
of the science you know and love best. 

VI. Read all the books on psychology to which you have 
access on the subject of associations, not so much to learn 
the book as to learn the subject. 

Lesson V 

DEFINITION OF ASSOCIATIONS 

Preparation Step.— Here are some lists I have just 
noticed : 

a. ( 1. ) A group of color sensations ; 
(2. Thought words,) Blue pencil. 

&. (1.) Sound sensations; 

(2. Thought words,) Miss P. ; 



Associations 25 

(3.) Secondary visual image of Miss P. in another 

room; 
^4. Thought words,) She must be working. 

c. (1.) Sound sensations; 

(2, Thought words,) She said " Don't close the 

door. ' ' 
(3.) I '11 leave it open ; 
(4.) I'll ask her what mail there was. 

• d. (1.) Sound sensations of my own voice ; 
(2. Thought words) Was there any mail? 

e. (1.) Sound sensations (of Miss P's voice) ; 
(2. Thought words) Not for you. 

(A little time ago I had this one :) 

/, (1.) Visual image of a calendar. 

(2. Thought words) The eighth. I must send some- 
thing for M 's birthday ; 
(3.) AVhat shall I send? 

(4.) Secondary visual image of a box of souvenirs; 
(5.) I might send that pillow-cover. 

Presentation Step.— I. How many of these thoughts 
could I have had without associations? In a I could not 
have known the name of the object. In 6 I could not have 
" known " the sounds, nor could I have thought of the 
person. In c I could not have planned to do as I did. In 
d and e I could not have asked the question, nor could I 
have understood the answer. 

II. In general, without associations a person could not 
think of the name of anything he saw or of any person ; 
he could not converse with people, as he could not think 
what to say in answer to their questions, nor could he 
even understand what they said; he could not read; he 



26 Lessons in Psychology 

would not know his own name, his own home, and friends ; 
he could not remember what he had done, nor could he 
make plans for the future. 

III. To contrast our imagined condition without asso- 
ciations with our real condition with associations always 
present : we should have a succession of isolated, discon- 
nected primary sensations coming along like so many 
beads dropping one by one from a box, instead of the con- 
nected flow that we do have, in which the sensations come 
in a previously established, organized, interrelated net- 
work of infinite complexity. Our stream of thought seems 
to be made up of first, a primary group of sensations of 
sight, sound, or some other sense, followed by one or more 
secondary groups in previously established relations, in- 
terrupted by another primary group, which in turn is fol- 
lowed by secondary groups, always ordered, connected, 
continuous all day long, all night long, and all our lives 
long. All elements of our stream of thought are related, 
none is isolated. We may then formulate this definition : 

IV. The relations between the elements of our mental 
life that secure for us continuity of thought are associations. 

Application Step.— I. It is this fact of association that 
makes us educable. If our organism were not governed by 
its law, we should be worse off than animals and even than 
plants, both of which are governed by the same law. And 
indeed the atoms of inorganic matter must be conceived as 
ordered in the same manner, for does not. a well-worn gar- 
ment become trained to fit us? 

As Professor James says, " Your pupils, whatever else 
they are, are at any rate little pieces of associating machin- 
ery. Their education consists in the organizing within them 
of determinate tendencies to associate one thing with an- 
other, — impressions with consequences, these with reactions, 



Associations 27 

those with results, and so on indefinitely. The more copious 
the associative systems, the completer the individual's 
adaptations to the world. 

" The teacher can formulate his function to himself 
therefore in terms of ' association ' as well as in terms of 
' native and acquired reaction.' It is mainly that of 
huilding up useful systems of association in the pupil's 
mind. This description sounds M'ider than the one I began 
by giving. But, when one thinks that our trains of associa- 
tion, whatever they may be, normally issue in acquired 
reactions or behavior, one sees that in a general way the 
same mass of facts is covered by both formulas. * * * 
' Those laws ru)i. the mind.' 

" To grasp these factors clearly gives one a solid simple 
understanding of the psychological machinery. The 
' nature,' the ' character,' of an individual means really 
nothing but the habitual form of his associations. To break 
up bad associations or wTong ones, to build others in, to 
guide the associative tendencies into the most fruitful 
channels, is the educator's principal task." (" Talks to 
Teachers. ' ' ) 

II. Some one has said, and I think that was Professor 
James, too, that an uneducated man is nonplused by all 
but the most usual circumstances. 

This statement means, for one thing, that the uneducated 
man has not been caused to interrelate, correlate, and as- 
sociate in right relations, or classify what knowledge he 
has, so that his thought can be nimble, flexible, supple. 
What he knows is not readily available, here to become a 
resource, there to point a .joke, and again for use in an 
emergency. 

III. " * * * association of ideas is intimately related to 
strength of character; when close connection is established 
among an abundance of related thoughts, one is likely to 



28 Lessons in Psychology 

be quicker, safer and firmer in the decisions he reaches. 
When we reflect that life consists of a continual debate, 
that in all matters, whether of morals or business, men are 
called upon to weigh evidence, to balance pros and cons, 
then to act, we see the extent to which the relationship 
among ideas must influence conduct. No matter how much 
a man may know, if he cannot think of it when it is needed, 
if he cannot mass it quickly against a temptation, or if he 
cannot have the benefit of it all in passing a judgment, he 
practically knows less and is a weaker man than he 
might be. 

' ' School education can help to remedy that defect. Since 
the rapidity and completeness of reproduction of ideas are 
known to depend upon the closeness of relationship among 
them, upon the extent to which they are built into chains, 
or series, or networks, one of the first duties of the in- 
structor is to weave the knowledge that he imparts into one 
web. Thereby character is greatly strengthened." (Frank 
McMurry, Ph.D., Concentration, " The First year Book of 
the Herbart Society.") 



CHAPTER II 

SENSATIONS 

Lesson I 

DEFINITION OF SENSATIONS 

Preparation Step. — The different parts, or members of 
trains of association are groups of sensations. In this les- 
son we shall study these elements. 

I. As a preparation for the study, name the sensations 
in the objects about you and in your thoughts somewhat 
like this: 

The sensations that make my table now are browns, grab's, 
greens, and yellows. 

I hear the children in the street ; the elements that make 
this experience are sounds of the peculiar quality of chil- 
dren's voices, high in pitch, shrill, loud, and sometimes 
musical. The sounds of the electric car that I recall hear- 
ing yesterday are harsh, loud, metallic, and noisy. The 
temperature sensation of some beads near my hand is cool ; 
my pen, warm. The touch of the beads is smooth in places, 
rough in other places. 

I recall the organic sensations connected with a church 
that I entered; they are close, stuffy, and stale. 

Notice every hour and write lists of many sensations, 
both primary and recalled, in your stream of thought. 

II. We may think of the nervous system as a single 
organ made up in general of two parts, (1) the lines of 
nerve-fibres radiating in pairs to all organs of the body and 
to every part of its surface from (2) the spinal and cere- 
bral centres. 



30 Lessons in I^sychology 

The function of the lines of nerve-fibres is to carry ex- 
citation, or " nerve impulse " to and from the end organs 
on the one hand and on the other, the spinal and cerebral 
centres. In the cerebral centres are effected the redistri- 
bution of impulses. 

AVhat the nature of nerve change in conduction is is not 
fully known. It seems probable that it is mechanical 
(vibratory), chemical, and electrical, all three. 

III. If the air were colored red so that you could see it, 
would it not seem to be more really matter! It is some- 
times difficult to realize that this invisible substance all 
around us has weight, that it is impenetrable, inert, and, in 
short, is as really matter as is the table, the house, or the 
Avater of the river. Yet such a realization will help you 
very much in studying what precedes sensations. 

IV. To think the conditions of the Atomic Theory into 
matter about you will also be a help to you. 

Try to realize that the ink and paper of the book, your 
hand, your clothing, and everything in the room as well 
are each and all actually made of minute particles, no two 
of which are in intimate contact, and all of which are in a 
state of vibration. If you quicken the rate of vibration of 
the molecules, you will raise the temperature and increase 
the volume. If this rate is increased still further, the par- 
ticles will be driven farther and farther apart till, unless 
chemical change takes place, a solid becomes a liquid and 
the liquid, a gas. If chemical change does take place, the 
elements resulting from decomposition become liquid or 
gaseous. If the rate of vibrati(m of the molecules in a 
given gas be decreased, its temperature will fall and its 
volume grow less until its form becomes liquid and finally 
solid. 

Study concretely all matter about you in the terms of 
this theory. In how many states may each kind exist? 



Sensations 31 

V. The Atomic Theory says that no two molecules of 
matter, as the paper, are in close contact. In the spaces 
between the molecules, called pores, is supposed to be an 
imponderable substance, ether, which, though it has none 
of the properties of matter, we think as existing. Ether 
seems to occupy all the spaces that are not filled by matter, 
those between us and the heavenly bodies as well as in- 
termolecular spaces. 

Presentation Step.— I. I just heard a bell ring, that is, 
I had a group of sound sensations. Think what had to take 
place before I could hear these sounds: 

The first thing was the striking together of two pieces of 
metal, the clapper and the bell, in such a way that vibra- 
tions of a rapid rate were started in both the bell and the 
clapper. Next, these vibrations, or waves were transmitted 
in straight lines by means of the air and other matter in 
all directions from the bell. Imagine these spheres of mo- 
tion moving out from the bell as a centre through the air, 
the walls, the earth, and everything in their way. In the 
course of time some of this motion reaches my ear-drums, 
is transmitted through the parts of my ears to my 
auditory nerves, and thus to certain cells in the tem- 
poral lobes of my brain. So far there have been only 
vibrations of matter. Now, apparently, a wholly new 
result takes place, in that I have a sensation of sound 
in my mind. 

No one has yet explained how vibrations of matter are 
turned into a mental state, a sensation. We have to accept 
the experience as a fact without any explanation. The re- 
sult then of this particular kind of brain excitation is a 
sensation of sound in my mind. 

II. Let us study next a sensation of smoothness, the 
touch of my pen : 



32 Lessons in Psychology 

As my finger tip moves over the pen, changes take place 
in the terminals of the nerves of touch in my skin. This 
excitation is transmitted along the length of the nerves 
of touch through my arm, body, and spinal cord to certain 
brain cells, and the result in my mind is sensations of 
smoothness. 

III. What takes place in order that we may have a sen- 
sation of color is rather more complex. It is perhaps some- 
what as follows : 

I see the color green of my blotter. The vibrations we 
are concerned with here originate in the solid particles of 
carbon in a lamp flame. As compared with those that vi- 
brate when the result is sound, these particles are vibrating 
at an intense rapidity. The waves thus started are trans- 
mitted in straight lines in all directions from the vibrating 
particles in the flame by the medium ether. Some of the 
vibrations are reflected from the blotter, though at a 
changed rate, through my eye, — its lenses and humors to 
the retina. Excitation is set up in the optic nerve and 
brain cells, and the result in my mind is the sensation 
green. 

It is probable, also, that when the source of vibration is 
the sun or any other body in intense enough vibration, the 
process and medium are the same. 

IV. We have studied what takes place when we have 
sensations of sound, touch, and color only. W^hat occurs 
in case of the other kinds of sensation is probably anal- 
ogous. When the sensations are secondary, (recalled, inner) 
though the end organs and nerves seem not to be excited, 
the brain-cells are active. 

In each case noticed the analysis of what precedes a sen- 
sation ends with the words. " the result in mind (of the 
cerebral excitation) is a sensation of sound, color, or touch. " 



Sensations 33 

A generalized form of this statement may be accepted as 
the definition of a sensation : 

The result in mind of cerebral excitation is a sensation. 

Application Step. — I. Imagine your condition without 
color sensations. In what terms must a blind man do his 
thinking'? How would you think the thoughts of the last 
hour without sound sensations'? Suppose that you had no 
sensations at all ! 

II. Observation of the sensations that you use in think- 
ing will soon show you that there are many more kinds than 
just those of the five senses of the older psychology. The 
' ' five gates of Mansoul ' ' are no longer adequate to furnish 
our complex mental life. Besides the sensations of these 
senses, we have those from the organs of the body, that is, 
organic sensations (such as tooth-ache, closeness, fatigue, 
hunger), sensations of temperature, pressure, and those 
from the tendons and joints. 

III. The body is like a quivering, sensitized sounding- 
board, each sense of which responds to its own rate of stim- 
ulus. Though not all stimuli result in active consciousness 
as discriminated sensations, or mental states, each modifies 
the others -and is in turn modified by them, so that the 
stream of thought at any moment is the resultant of all the 
bodily stimuli. 

IV. The fact that different sensations are the mental 
results of different rates of vibration in matter seems to 
indicate that the different senses had a common origin. 
And indeed such is apparently the case. 

The spinal cord and the entire nervous system are be- 
lieved to have developed from the external embryological 
layer, the skin, and all the higher senses have arisen as 
gradually differentiated and specialized forms of touch, the 
"mother tongue" of the senses, 
3 



34 Lessons in Psychology 

V. Why do we not hear sounds from the sun,, Jupiter, or 
the " morning stars?" 

VI. Suppose your auditory nerve had always vibrated at 
the same rate : Would there have been a sensation result- 
ing from this particular excitation ? 

We must think that there would not. Change seems to 
be necessary to attract our attention. In fact, all sensation 
might be defined as " consciousness of change." " The 
chain of consciousness is a sequence of ditferents " (S. 
Hodgson, " The Philosophy of Reflection "). 

VII. Here again, as in the study of associations, the cau- 
tion is necessary that, though for convenience in analysis 
we have spoken of sensations as if they were separate real- 
ities, perhaps somewhat like the atoms of matter, they 
must not be thought of as such. 

" No one of them " (mental elements) " can live out of 
that particular thought, any more than my head can live 
off of my particular shoulders. In a sense a soap-bubble has 
parts; it is a sum of juxtaposed spherical triangles. But 
these triangles are not separate realities; neither are the 
'parts' of the thought separate realities. Touch the 
bubble and the triangles are no more. Dismiss the thought 
and out go its parts. You can no more make a new thought 
out of 'ideas' that have once served than you can make 
a new bubble out of old triangles. Each bubble, each 
thought, is a fresh organic unity, sui generis." ("Psychol- 
ogy," Vol. I, W. James.) 

VIII. Study your stream of thought as though it were 
made entirely of sensational elements, that is, as though all 
thinking and experience were in the terms of colors, sounds, 
touches, tastes, smells, temperatures, and organic sensa- 
tions. "All thought is the action and interaction of 
sensations." 



Sensations 35 

Someone has likened sensations to the letters of the al- 
phabet, which have spelled out all of literature ; so our sen- 
sations spell out for us all our experience, both inner and 
outer, or primary and secondary. 

Learn by daily study this alphabet of mental life;— name 
and make lists of the elements of many trains of association. 
Make lists also under each sense of as many sensations as 
you notice, and analyze what precedes each. 

Lesson II 

THE SENSE OF SOUND 

Preparation Step.— I. Name the sounds you have no- 
ticed during the last hour. 

II. The analysis of what precedes the sound sensations 
of a piano I hear is as follows : Hammers controlled by 
means of a mechanism through the keys of the piano are 
caused to strike the wdres stretched over a sounding-board 
in the piano case. The wires vibrate as a result, and the air 
transmits the motion from them in all directions. Some of 
the waves strike the sounding-board which so collects and 
reflects them that they are intensified. As reflected these 
waves travel in all directions through matter, that is, the 
air, the floor, and the walls of the room and the house, and 
some of them finally reach my ear. Excitation is set up 
in the auditory nerve and brain-cells, and there is a result 
in mind of sensations of sounds. 

Go over again and again some similar analysis for your- 
self, imagining vividly what takes place and tracing 
with your finger the lines of vibration that come to 
your ears. 

III. Analyze what precedes many different sounds, as 
voices, the wind, the rain. 



36 Lessons in Psychology 

IV. How many people do you know by their voices? 
Name all the differences you notice between voices, talking 
and singing; between different bird notes, musical instru- 
ments, bells, whistles, horns, doors, foot-steps, cars, ve- 
hicles, machines. 

V. Notice how accurately you can tell by sounds the di- 
rection of objects, their distance, size, and material. 

VI. What is the range of your speaking voice ! Of your 
singing voice? How many octaves has your piano? 

VII. How much do you care for music ? M^^hat are your 
favorite songs? Musical instruments'? Recall what you 
know about harmony. 

VIII. Start separate lists of all the songs you know that 
stir and inspire feelings of patriotism, courage ; of love of 
home, nature, God. Classify other songs as those of war, 
love, the cradle; folk-songs, children's songs, work songs. 

What instrumental music has power to move you emo- 
tionally ?— name the compositions and instruments. 

Objects in PRESENTATION Step. — I. In the analysis of what prcccdcs 

which vibra- • t i \ • i 

tionsthat souuds you must havc noticed that a) sometnnes the waves 

result in sound ■, n tt / • -i 

originate. are Started m each of two solids struck together, (as m the 
clapper and the bell) ; b) sometimes in liquids falling into 
liquids, (as in a water- fall) ; and c) again, in a gas imping- 
ing a gas, (as in thunder). Observe also that the vibrations 
may originate d) from contact of any two different states 
of matter, as when a solid and a liquid are set in motion by 
contact (rain falling on the roof). 

The objects in which vibrations originate that result in 
sound are of matter in solid, liquid, or gaseous form. 

Media for jj ^5. there must be some form of matter to vibrate in 

waves that re- 
sult in sound, order to start the motion that results in sound, so there 

must be some form of matter to carry the vibrations. Since, 

for example, the piano was in another house, the waves to 



Sensations 37 

reach my ear had to travel through both the air and the 
solid walls. 

Strike the brush and soap together under water. Can 
you hear them? The liquid must transmit the vibrations 
part of the way. 

Close the air passages of the ears with cotton for half an 
hour. Do not vibrations from the house and street still 
come to your auditory system through the ground, the 
building, and the bony framework of your body? Do not 
confuse -the jarring motions with sound oscillations. 

Accustom yourself to detect the media for the different 
vibrations that aft'ect your ear. 

Matter in some form, solid, liquid, or gaseous is necessary 
to transmit waves that result in sound. 

III. The organ of the sense of hearing is composed of The organ of 

.....,, , , • 1 11 t^^ sense of 

three easily distniguishable parts, the outer, the middle, hearing, 
and the inner ear. 

Of these, the outer ear, a fold of skin and cartilage, re- 
flects the air-waves and air-shocks into the hollow tube 
which is closed by the tympanic membrane. 

This membrane is thrown into vibration by the motion 
of the air particles, and its motion is transmitted to a series 
of three bones within the middle ear, a hollow in the tem- 
poral bone. 

Next adjoining the middle ear is the inner ear, a series 
of hollows also in the temporal bone, a very minute struc- 
ture and wonderfully complicated. 

In some way excitation transmitted to the inner ear is 
communicated to the auditory nerve and finally to ter- 
minals in the temporal lobes of the brain. 

The ear has been fancifully likened to a tiny piano with 
a keyboard for the air to play on. 

IV. All the knowledge that we get through the sense 
of hearing is included under the term sounds. 



38 



Lessons in Psychology 



Probably all of the sounds that you have noticed are 
complex, that is, they are made up both of noisy and 
musical elements, and, depending upon the preponderance 
of one or the other, are called noises or music. 

1. Sounds the result in mind of a slow and irregular rate 
of vibration are noises, (as, the pop of a soap-bubble, the 
sound of a footstep) ; 

2. Those, the result of rapid and regular ones are musi- 
cal. Among the differences that should be noticed in 
musical sounds are those in a) pitch, b) intensity, c) vol- 
ume, and d) quality. 

a). In pitch a sound is acute or grave. This character- 
istic is found to depend on the number of vibrations in a 
given time necessary to produce the sound, — the greater 
the number, the higher the pitch. The gravest musical 
sound audible is the result of about sixteen regular vibra- 
tions the second. Jars or shocks slower than this rate are 
not heard at all. The highest estimate of the limit of 
acuteness places it at fifty thousand vibrations the second. 

From the fact that there is a certain definite proportion 
in the rate of vibration for musical tones, the science of 
harmony is possible. 

Though the ear- is susceptible to 11000 differences in 
pitch, only about ninety are used in the musical scale, which 
falls well within the vibration rates of 64 to 5000 per sec- 
ond. The range of the music that we know is relatively 
not many octaves higher and lower than that of the lipman 
voice, perhaps because it all evolved from singing. Among 
the great operas Lohengrin is interesting as the only one 
written chiefly in the higher register. 

b). By the intensity of a sound is meant its loudness or 
softness. The amplitude of the waves in the vibrating source 
determines this characteristic. The distance of the vibrating 



Sensations 39 

source also makes a difference in the loudness or softness 
of it. 

c). The sounds you have noticed differ also in volume, 
that is, in their amount, fullness, or quantity. One voice, 
for example, is of less volume than a hundred voices— an 
organ tone has greater volume than that of a piano. 

d). But perhaps the most interesting difference in musi- 
cal sounds to the amateur observer is that in quality. The 
pitch and intensity of two voices may be the same, but it 
is the peculiar quality of each that identifies it for us. 

The explanation of this characteristic of sound is in the 
fact that every vibrating body moves as a whole and at the 
same time also in parts. The vibration of a body as a whole 
results in its fundamental tone ; that of its parts, in over- 
tones. The effect of the blending of these tones, different 
for every substance, is the quality, or timhre of sounds. 

Application Step. — I. How many differences in sounds 
did you name in the Preparation-Step ? Classify those dif- 
ferences now in something like this list : Differences in 
sounds in 

1. Pitch : High, low, shrill, grave, soprano, alto, con- 
tralto, baritone, bass, flat, sharp, piercing, acute, deep. 

2. Intensity: Penetrating, loud, soft, heavy, faint, 
strong, powerful, timid, bold, strident, piano, forte. 

3. Volume: Heavy, light, tiny, pipy, small, little, puny, 
fine, full, rich, masculine, feminine, chest and head tones, 
pompous, ineffective, bellowing, booming. 

4. Quality: Musical, unmusical, noisy, sweet, harsh, 
hoarse, fine, coarse, cornet-like, throaty, aspirate, guttural, 
strident, flute-like, masculine, feminine, reed-like, silvery, 
alto, soprano, tenor, bass, rumbling, slamming, clashing, 
crashing, tearing, ripping, sonorous, crackling, rolling, pen- 



40 Lessons in Psychology 

etrating, childish, bird-like, husky, rasping, nasal, chest 
and head tones, gay, solemn, tinny, metallic, pleasant, 
whining, having a tang, sharp, resonant, uncultivated, 
breathy, sympathetic, mellow, flat, lifeless, squeaky, dry, 
strained, dull. 

II. Of musical instruments that we know the flute has 
fewest overtones, and for that reason it is often regarded 
Avhen played alone as rather colorless. The violin on the 
other hand has many overtones and noise elements, and thus 
infinite possibilities in character. 

III. Analyze noises to determine tone elements (pitch) 
in them. Some one says that the roar of a great city is in F. 

IV. Think of ways in which we extend the sense of hear- 
ing: Explain the megaphone; the ordinary speaking-tube; 
the dentiphone ; the graphophone ; the electric telephone. 

V. Do you see now why we do not hear sounds from the 
heavenly bodies'? There is no air most of the way out, no 
matter to transmit whatever waves there are from them 
to us. 

VI. Americans are much criticized for their lack of cul- 
tivation in voice and speech. Richard Harding Davis tells 
about ' ' the high public-school voice. ' ' The French people 
at home, since they think we cannot speak our own lan- 
guage, choose the English in preference to us to teach their 
children English. In Henry James' judgment, " The parts 
of our speech, the syllables of our words, the tones of our 
voice, the shade of our articulation, are among the most 
precious of our familiar tools." Here is much food for 
thought for American teachers. 

VII. " No genius is more precocious than that for music, 
and with talent, progress during the early teens is often 
prodigious. For the average youth there is probably no 
such agent of educating the heart to love of God, home, 
nature, and hence there is no aspect of our educational life 



Sensations 41 

more sad than the neglect or perversion of musical training 
from this, its supreme end. * * * Darwin holds that 
music, instead of originating in speech cadences, as Spencer 
thinks, sprung from and is reminiscent of the physchoses 
of old courtships of a long past age.* * * Singing is the 
most universal language, because it is the language of feel- 
ing. Piety, patriotism, all the racial and domestic senti- 
ments and love of nature can be thus trained. Teachers 
of singing have drifted very far from the intent of nature 
in this respect. Love, home, war, religion, country * * * 
it is their lirst duty to preform in the heart. The merely 
technical process of reading notes is a small matter com- 
pared with the education of the sentiments." (G, S. Hall 
" Adolescence.") 

Lesson III 

THE SENSE OP SIGHT 

Preparation Step. — I. How many colors do you know 
by name'? Write out the list. 

II. If you had always been blind, how much of the world 
about you should you miss ? Study it out at your leisure in 
detail. 

III. In order that I may see the red of a Christmas bell 
at which I am now looking vibrations started in the sun 
must come through the medium ether, undergo a change at 
a certain part of their course, reach my eye, and set up 
nerve impulse in my optic nerve and brain cells. Then 
there is a result in my mind of the color red. 

IV. How do different reds differ ? How is dark red made 
in mixing paints? Light red? pink? purple? brown? If 
possible, combine color disks on a wheel to analyze the com- 
plex color effects of the clothing you have on and of objects 
in the room. 



42 Lessons in Psychology 

V. Do you ever see colors with your eyes closed 1 Recall 
a blue-print you saw recently ; a grove of trees. Did you not 
think these in blues, browns, and greens ? Study the images 
carefully, as it takes a little time to realize that most of 
us think often in the terms of secondary visual images, and 
that even with the eyes open. Of what use are your eyes 
in absolute darkness ? 

VI. If a flame of hydrogen is burned in an atmosphere 
of oxygen can you see it? Why must calcium be in- 
troduced ? 

VII. Notice the photographs mounted for a stereoscope : 
they are not alike, but the lenses of the instrument so com- 
bine them that they make one picture, and that one in 
perspective. 

How accurate is your estimate of distance by sight? 
Study the photograph or the painting before you as a 
group of colors representing distance. 

VIII. Speaking and writing are familiar means of ex- 
pression ; why might not drawing be as commonly used? 
What advantage would it be to you to sketch as readily and 
as effectively as you talk "1 What would the last letter you 
wrote gain by illustrations? 

Objects in PRESENTATION Step.— I. a. The vibratious to which the 

which vibra- 
tions that eye is sensitive may originate in solid matter (as in a glow- 
result in color ' • » i • n 

originate. iug coal ; solid particlcs of carbon m a flame of gas, oil, or 
alcohol; red hot iron; the carbon of an electric light,) and 
in certain liquids (molten glass, iron,); in certain sub- 
stances not in combustion said to be phosphorescent ; in a 
vacuum under certain electrical stimulus, and in some other 
conditions not understood. 

b. The source of most of the vibrations that make pos- 
sible color for us is the sun. This body is matter in a state 



Sensations 43 

of intense vibration and it gives off its vibrations in all 
directions at all times. 

We see all sides of the sun in the course of a year, though 
we are on the side of the earth that is turned away from 
the sun half of the day. Since there was not light enough 
to see to follow the occupations of the daytime during this 
half, we as a race have formed the habit of sleeping through 
most of it. 

c. Though only a few objects originate vibrations that 
result in color, an innumerable number constantly reflect 
these waves from every point of their surface. It is, in 
fact, by means of reflected lines of vibration that we see 
everything except the so-called self-luminous objects, that 
is, those that are themselves originating the motion. 

A surface that reflects all the vibrating rays unchanged 
is a perfect mirror and is itself invisible. 

II. a. The medium for vibrations resulting in sounds is Medium 
matter in solid, liquid, or gaseous form. No one of these 
forms of matter is necessary, however, to carry the waves 
that result in color, though all three will allow them to 
pass through under certain conditions. 

jMatter that will allow all the vibrating ra.ys to pass 
through is said to be transparent, and if it does not reflect 
any vibrations cannot itself be seen. 

b. Little is known of the medium that transmits the 
waves to the eye. From their phenomena it seems probable 
that they, the waves, conform to the same laws that govern 
like conditions in the sense of sound, therefore we speak as 
though there Avere a medium analogous to matter and we 
call it ether. 

Ill a. The eye is a combination of lenses which bend the Organ, 
vibrating rays of ether so that they may be brought to a 
focus on the retina, the true nervous end organ of sight. 



44 Lessons in Psychology 

These lenses are a development of layers of the skin. The 
retina, which lines the back part of the eye-ball, is a bit of 
the brain pushed out to meet the particular physical excita- 
tion to which it is sensitive. 

The eye-ball is moved in its socket by six strong muscles. 

b. The effect of having two eyes is that we see our world 
in perspective. A simple experiment will show you some- 
thing of the mechanism of this phenomenon: 

Hold your left hand six inches in front of your face with 
the palm facing toward the right, the thumb toward your 
face. With the left eye closed draw what the right eye 
sees of the hand. Next, without moving the head or hand, 
draw what the left eye sees. These pictures are not alike. 
Through the right eye you saw the thumb and palm, 
through the left, the thumb and back of the hand. 

Observe many objects in the room through each eye sep- 
arately, and you will find that the pictures on the two 
retinae are never just alike. 

Now these two images are always combined by the eyes 
in such a way that there is in the mind one image, and 
that is in perspective. We wear a stereoscope all the time, 
only it is a natural one, and as a result we say that we 
see a third dimension in our world. 
Knowledge. I^- &• The result of the stimulus of the optic nerve is in 

general brightness and color of varying intensity. All our 
visual experience may be reduced to the following simple 
elements : 

1. Colorless light elements, white, gray, and black — (in 

evolution, the primitive experience, dating back to 
the eye-specks of jelly-fish). 

2. Red, yellow, green, blue— (later, more complicated in 

race experience, the results of vibrations from 440 
billions to 790 trillions per second). 



Sensations 45 

b. From your observation of colors you will no doubt 
have been astonished at the multiplicity of them required 
to make your world. Most of this great number seem not 
to differ fundamentally from each other, but to have re- 
sulted from the combination of the few simple elements 
named above. 

c. A color is pure, or saturated in proportion as it is free 
from all admixture with other colors. The colors that we 
see in nature and that we use in clothing, decoration, and 
art are rarely pure. Without combination with both black 
and white a pure color would seem crude and bizarre, and 
usually other colors, as well, enter into the complex. 

d. There is no science of colors corresponding to that of 
musical sounds, harmony. 

Application Step. — I. Though we cannot hear sounds 
from the heavenly bodies, we can see their light. The vi- 
brating rays that they originate or reflect are readily trans- 
mitted " through ether " to us, and we see the glories of 
an innumerable host. 

II. We extend the sense of sight by the artificial lenses 
that we wear over our eyes, as eye-glasses and spectacles. 
Explain opera glasses ; a telescope ; a microscope. 

III. What is the influence of sight on other senses ? Com- 
pare your enjoyment of music when you cannot see the 
musicians with that when you can; of speaking when you 
cannot see the speaker with that when you can. 

It is noticeable that those who become blind lose their 
appetite. Think how much sight adds to our enjoyment 
of the table. 

IV. Correspondences between color and sound : 

a. Both are the result in mind of vibration, sound of 
rates from 16 up to 50,000 the second; color, of rates up 
in the billions and trillions. 



46 Lessons in Psychology 

b. Sensations of simple noise in sound correspond to sen- 
sations of brightness in sight. 

c. The rapidity of the periodic rate makes the ditit'erence 
in the pitch of sounds ; in sight, it makes the difference in 
colors, the red end of the spectrum corresponding to the 
grave tones, the violet to the shrill tones. 

V. According to the theory of evolution, the race is 
evolving toward insensibility to the red end of the spec- 
trum and, on the other hand, to greater sensibility to the 
violet end. 

In support of the theory it is noticed that savage races 
have been found having names only for black, white, and 
red. They have not yet evolved to a knowledge of blue. 

Color blindness, moreover, is blindness to red. Savages 
are rarely color-blind (only one in twenty) ; civilized races 
are losing their sensitiveness to the red end of the spectrum 
(one in five of those tested for positions on railways fail 
through ignorance or absolute color-blindness). On the 
other hand artists and those trained in color see violet in 
all nature and as a part of all color experience. 

An experiment made with a group of men and women 
showed that of 30 men, 10 to 3 preferred blue to red ; of 
30 women, 4 to 5 preferred blue to red. Since woman is 
more generic than man, this result was regarded as further 
confirmation of the theory that we are losing sensitiveness 
to the red end and gaining sensitiveness to the violet end 
of the spectrum. 

VI. At first thought it would seem that besides colors we 
see distance, form, shape, size, and position. Yet the optic 
nerve does not respond in different ways (that is, rates) 
for colors one yard away and for the same colors five yards 
distant; for a square object and a spherical one; for a 
large object and a small one. 



Sensations 47 

We know the distance, size, and shape of the table as 
compared with those of the wall by the associations we 
have established with different groups of colors before. 
When the given groups of colors are in mind, we think at 
once. The wall is farther away than the table ; the table is 
not so broad as the wall and is square. 

VII. Remember that to be blind is not always the same 
as to be in darkness. Though a child sees colors he is 
blind to many objects, forms, and distances, because the 
given colors are not discriminated and correlated with other 
parts of his experience. 

A blind man on first having his " sight restored " is as 
blind as he was before. To be sure his optic nerve is as- 
sailed by as many stimuli as ours is, but he has a long and 
complex process of establishing associations to go through 
before he can have in his mind a definite group of colors 
followed by the thought, ' ' my cat " or " the floor. ' ' 

Did you ever think how convenient it is to be able to see 
objects at a distanced Suppose we had to depend on touch 
and sound alone in judging distance. 

We have always to remember that it is not the eye but 
the mind that sees. 

VIII. How many colors did you find that you knew by 
name ? 

It seems that naming makes a difference in knowledge of 
color. It was found by experiment that when three differ- 
ent shades of gray were exposed, the subject on seeing each 
one alone later readily identified it. But when two addi- 
tional shades were inserted among these three, making five 
graduated grays, the subject was not sure of any one when 
it was shown alone. When, however, the shades were 
marked 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, the subject later readily identified 
each one. 



48 Lessons in Psychology 

The conclusion drawn is that if we knew more color 
names, that is, if there were names and we learned them of 
more of the colors that we see, we should be able to remem- 
ber and use a greater number of them and should have 
greater thought power in everything that involves imaging 
in color. 

It is said that the workers in mosaic in the Vatican must 
have distinguished as many as 40,000 colors. Frederick 
Tracy found in his examination of child vocabularies, a 
few years ago, that out of 5400 words known to children 
only about 30 are color terms. 

We have not only no science of color but also no system 
of naming colors that is in any measure adequate to our ex- 
perience. It is to be hoped that some ingenious mind will 
devise such a system for the benefit of kindergartens and 
primary and intermediate grades. There is much, meantime, 
that can be done in training the color sense of children. 

IX. If one knew more, that is a larger number, of color 
sensations rightly correlated, what difference would it make 
in his ability to think? 

Surely he would have more power in those lines involving 
color and a knowledge of color. But multiplicity of sensa- 
tions alone, notice, does not make all the difference; their 
relations as well must be considered. Imagine a mind with 
the color discrimination of an artist, the knowledge of 
sounds of a musician, and the sensitiveness to touch of the 
blind, and all these systems adequately correlated in the 
higher forms of thought. What about its power? Would 
the person having such a mind be a better statesman, me- 
chanic, son, than he would be were he blind and deaf? In 
what ways? 

The two senses of sight and hearing certainly supply 
material greatly superior to that of the others for elabora- 
tion into ideational proeesses. 



Sensations 49 

Yet education must guard against arrest of development 
in that stage of advancement when sensation is the pre- 
dominant mode of thought. Among races this condition 
is illustrated by the Indians. The excessive training of 
their senses seems to have had the effect of stultifying their 
later and higher power of thought. 

X. The study of genetic psychology shows that the best 
time for sense-training and development of the powers of 
observation (that is, supplying a large potential of sensa- 
tions in right relations) is probably before nine years of 
age. The spontaneous curiosit^^ and love of nature that 
characterize childhood, the ' ' native tendencies ' ' of the 
period offer a wonderful opportunity for such training. 

XI. Then again at adolescence occurs a distinctly differ- 
ent phase of sense development and training. The medulla- 
tion of new associational fibres in the brain and the almost 
spontaneous outburst of the great wealth of the emotional 
nature modify the problem of teaching here fundamentally. 

' ' There is, no doubt, an important change in the relative 
prominence of the different senses in our psychic life at 
this stage (adolescence) with its new emotions, interests, and 
apathies. Adolescent years mark the golden age of sense, 
which is so prone to become sensual if uncontrolled. Then 
-the soul exposes most surface, as it were, to the external 
world. The eye gate and ear gate especially are open their 
widest, and not only that, but the feeling tone and the gen- 
eral sense feeling, so largely independent of perception, 
are also at their best, so that the possibilities of knowing 
our world and acquiring experience on the one hand, and 
of lapsing to a life of indulgence, are now most developed." 
(G. S. Hall, "Adolescence.") 



50 Lessons in Psychology 

Lesson IV 

TASTE AND SMELL 

Preparation Step.— L To get material for the gener- 
alizations of this lesson, let us take the smell and taste sen- 
sations that go to make up a single meal— for example, 
breakfast : 

Suppose we start with grape fruit: It has a faint fra- 
grance, a sweet taste, a slightly bitter taste, and a some- 
what sour taste, also a peculiar flavor. Suppose cereal with 
cream comes next: The cereal has a salty taste, is sweet, 
and has the peculiar flavor of oatmeal ; the cream is sweet 
and has a flavor peculiar to it. Both have slight but char- 
acteristic odors. The next course is, say, bacon and baked 
potatoes with coffee and rolls. The bacon has a pungent 
odor and a smoky flavor; both it and the potatoes have a 
salty taste, and the potatoes have a flavor peculiar to them 
as well as an odor. The coffee has a characteristic odor, 
a flavor, and a sweet taste. 

II. a. In order to have the sweet taste of the sugar in the 
coffee particles of the solution must come in contact with 
the nerve terminals in the tongue. Excitation peculiar to 
the gustatory nerve is set up, brain-cells are changed, and 
the result in mind is the taste sensation sweet. 

b. The smell of coft'ee: When the coffee was boiled a 
true gas was given oft' into the air. Matter is minutely 
divisible and widely dift'usible, so that tiny particles often 
travel through small openings and long distances. Thus 
minute particles of the coffee traveled through several 
rooms, keyholes, and small cracks, and were breathed into 
the nostrils with the air. They came in contact with the 
terminals of the olfactory nerves, which are distributed in 



Sensations 51 

the mucous membrane lining the nasal passages, set up an 
excitation in the nerves and brain-cells, and the result in 
mind is a sensation of the odor of coffee. 

III. After you have observed carefully many substances 
that have taste, make experiments with them. Try tasting 
meats, vegetables, and fruits (all minced, so that their 
peculiar resistance and touch sensations shall not identify 
them) with the nasal passage stopped. You will find that 
celery, steak, and many other foods have no "taste" 
left. 

IV. Observe carefully all the sensations in connection 
with what you eat at every meal. 

V. What difference does a cold make in your enjoyment 
of the table ? 

VI. Experiment to find the differences in sensitiveness 
of different parts of the tongue to svigar; to salt, vinegar, 
and quinine. 

VII. Make lists of the other substances besides foods that 
have tastes and smells. 

Presentation Step. — I. a. The tongue, especially its The sense 
sides and the tip and back of its upper surface, the forward organ, 
surface of the palate, and sometimes other parts of the 
mucous membrane lining the mouth cavity are sensitive to 
taste stimuli. 

b. Not all parts of the tongue furnish us given sensations 
with equal sensitiveness. The tip seems to be particularly 
sensitive to sweet and salt, the sides to sour. Some sub- 
stances, furthermore, such as saccharine, produce one taste 
in one part of the mouth and a different one in another. 

c. In masticating food relish for it increases from tht' 
tip to the back of the tongue, an inducement that has 
evolved with us to keep the morsel moving backwards till 
it is swallowed. 



52 



Lessons in Psychology 



Objects. 



Knowledge 



d. The sense of taste seems often to improve through life 
and sometimes to develop to an exquisite degree of sensi- 
bility in old age. 

II. To stimulate the nerve terminals in the tongue mat- 
ter must be soluble in water or saliva and must be in 
contact with the tongue. If the tongue is dry, no taste 
sensation is possible. 

III. a. There seem to be only four taste elements, salt, 
sour, sweet, and its opposite bitter. 

b. Another class of sensations peculiar to the tongue, 
though more complex than these four since they involve 
touch, are those like alkaline, astringent, fiery, acrid, 
metallic. 

c. All these sensations, however, are not enough to cover 
our experience with food. What we loosely speak of as 
different tastes are often complexes of odors, motor exper- 
iences, pressures, pains, visual elements, and sensations of 
temperature with a far more limited number of taste ele- 
ments than we ordinarily suppose. 



The sense of 
smell. Organ. 



IV. a. Because of the difficulty in localizing within the 
nostrils the areas of the olfactory nerve terminals, little is 
really known of the physiological conditions of smell. 

Exhaustion of the nostrils for certain continuous smells 
seems to show that different parts of the end organs, as 
in taste, are affected by distinct stimuli. 

b. Each nasal cavity opens at its farther end into the 
pharynx, and it is through this passage that gaseous par- 
ticles from the mouth enter the nostrils to stimulate the 
smell sensations, flavors, that so often seem to be a part of 
the taste of our food. 

c. The human brain is far less developed in its olfactory 
centres than the animal brain. The power of discrimina- 



Sensations 53 

tion in this sense and consequent instruction and guidance 
by means of it are relatively great among many animals, 
especially carnivorous quadrupeds, like the dog. 

V. The fact has recently been established that the smell o^'Jects. 
stimulus is always a true gas. The presence of oxygen 
seems necessary to stimulation, since, in human beings, at 
least, in case the nostrils are filled with liquid no smell sen- 
sation results. 

The sense of smell has been called " taste at a distance." 
Yet in smell, not less than in taste, contact with the matter 
is necessary to stimulus. 

VI. a. Smell sensations may be classified as sweet, or ^"^owiedge. 
fragrant, (as rose, jasmine, apple,) and their opposites. 

b. Those odors in sympathy with the lungs have been 
described as fresh and close. Fresh odors have a refresh- 
ing, quickening, exhilarating effect on the lungs (as can de 
Cologne, lavender, peppermint, musk). Close or suffocat- 
ing odors arise from a depressed action of the lungs. (De- 
ficiency of oxygen, the decay of organic matter, the effluvia 
of crowds lower the powers of life and are accompanied by 
a depressing effect.) 

c. Many odors (like ammonia, nicotine, mustard) have 
a quality derived through the excitation of the nerves of 
touch, a sharp, stinging sensation described as pun- 
gency. 

d. The sense of smell is less acute in children than in 
adults. The abundance of mucous in infancy and the pres- 
ence of mechanical difficulties in the form of the nostrils 
up to seven years of age explain this obtuseness of smell 
sensibilities in childhood. 

Application Step.— I. Has the wood of your pencil 
taste? Can you not tell pine from cedar by tasting them? 
And is wood soluble in saliva? 



54 Lessons in Psychology 

Of course it is not, but it may contain oils or gums, 
minute particles of which passing through the nasal pas- 
sages when you put the pencil in your mouth affect the sense 
of smell and give a characteristic flavor to the wood. 

In order to have the sensations of the flavor of the wood 
of my pencil, (taste yours and follow the analysis through 
with me,) small particles of an oil in the wood are set free 
in my mouth as the pencil touches my tongue and in the 
act of expiration accompanying tasting are carried into 
the cavities of the nose and start an excitation in the nerves 
of smell. The result in mind is the sensation of the flavor 
of wood. 

Resins are not soluble, for example, spruce gum. This 
resin contains an essential oil, however, that gives it its 
peculiar, agreeable flavor. 

II. When you place a drop of camphor on your tongue 
it smarts and there is precipitated a white insoluble sub- 
stance. This precipitate is camphor gum, an essential oil, 
not soluble in water, hence witiiout taste. It has, however, 
the strong odor and the characteristic flavor by which 
camphor is readily identifled. 

III. Determine by experiment whether the following 
substances have tastes or flavors, or both : Oranges, peaches, 
apples of different kinds, currants, olives, peanuts, butter- 
nuts, dates, onions, turnips, potatoes, celery, lettuce, vanilla, 
tea, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, lemon, radishes, pepper, 
chocolate, alum, brass, rubber, paper, leather, celluloid, 
glue, ink, fish, turkey, and many others. 

IV. "The famous mosque of Saint Sophia in Constanti- 
nople is always fragrant with the odor of musk and has 
been so ever since it was built in the ninth century, the 
curious thing being that nothing is done to keep it per- 
fumed. The solution of the seeming mystery lies in the 



Sensations 55 

fact that when it was built, over 1,000 years ago, the stones 
and bricks were fixed with mortar mixed with musk." 

This example illustrates the extraordinary degree to 
which some matter has the properties of divisibility and 
dift'usibility. 

V. Kipling tells about "the hair-trigger-like sensitive- 
ness of a Jungle nose.'' 

Imagine what a dog is thinking in a room full of people. 
Where to us it seems a multiplicity of colors and sounds, it 
probably seems to the dog a bewildering complex of smells. 

VI. "Art employs visual and auditory materials, both 
because they admit such numberless combinations, and be- 
cause, also, forms and colors are relatively permanent and 
sounds are readily reproducible. Odors, on the other hand, 
are far less capable of fusions and are neither permanent 
nor easily revivable, hence they are of little importance in 
art ; and so it comes about that the perfumer is even less 
likely than the cook to be reckoned among artists." 
("Psychology"— Mary W. Calkins.) 

VII. " Taste is the door-keeper at the entrance to the 
alimentary canal, and the human face, including nose and 
eyes, which are primarily food-finders, and the jaws, which 
are triturators, have developed as accessories. All the 
higher metabolism depends upon keeping the appetite true 
to the needs of the body, like a somatic conscience always 
pointing steadfastly toward undiscovered poles, the one of 
nutritive need and the other of human destiny." (G. S. 
Hall, "Adolescence.") 

Lesson V 

TOUCH, MUSCULAR, TEMPERATURE, AND ORGANIC SENSATIONS 

Preparation Step.— I. Stand up for a moment: How 
long could you stand if the soles of your feet were com- 



56 Lessons in Psychology 

pletely insensible? Could you rise, step, walk, run, skate? 
Imagine each of these movements if the hip joints were 
insensible to the weight of the body. 

II. Notice the resulting sensations when you touch fur, 
the bristles of a stiff brush, cold water, warm water ; notice 
the touch and pressure sensations of clothing on different 
parts of the body ; heft the weight of a book ; recall how 
your hat feels on your head ; press the rubber of your pencil, 
your collar with the muscles of your neck ; recall sensations 
of hunger, of the enjoyment of food, of your foot asleep, 
of tickling, itching, smarting, fatigue, feverishness. 

III. Hunger seems to be a matter of the general depletion 
of the blood. Perhaps because we connect sensations of 
repletion with the stomach, we have come to localize those 
of hunger in the same organ. When the nerves of the stom- 
ach are deranged in a certain way, the excitation is trans- 
mitted to the brain and the result in mind is the sensation 
of hunger. 

IV. The pressure of my collar against my neck affects 
the nerve terminals in the skin and muscles there, the ex- 
citation is carried to the brain, and the result in mind is 
a sensation of pressure, or resistance. 

V. Clench the hand firmly, but in such a manner that its 
surfaces do not touch each other. Pick out some one muscle 
of a finger or part of the palm, look at it carefully as it 
is strained and find out just where the sense of strain is 
localized. Is it not where the tendons, or fibrous cords 
connect the muscle with the bone? As you move the finger 
can you not detect also sensations of the jamming together 
and stretching apart of the joints and of the contraction 
and relaxation of the muscles ? 

All muscular action takes energy, and all conscious mus- 
cular movement takes more or less conscious effort. Notice 



Sensations 57 

the effort required to rise from yonr chair, to walk, to talk, 
to write. 

VI. Analyze into sensations the experiences of yawning, 
coughing, sneezing, hiccoughing, stretching the muscles, 
swallowing. 

VII. Do you know anybody who is ever moody, irritable 
without outward cause? What is your habitual outlook 
on life, optimistic or pessimistic ? 

Presentation Step.— I. The organ of the sense of touch The sense of 
is the surface of the entire body. Not all parts of the body, 
however, are equally sensitive. The upper surface of the 
tongue is exceedingly delicate, as is also the mucous mem- 
brane which lines the nostrils. Parts of the eye, and the lip 
seem to rank next in sensitiveness to touch, and the other 
parts of the body, speaking very generally, in the following 
order: the palm of the hand, the sole of the foot, the fore- 
arm, leg, shoulder, breast, abdomen, back and upper part 
of the thigh. 

II. a. In order to affect the sense of touch, matter must objects, 
be in solid form. We do not say of water and air that they • 
feel smooth or rough to the touch. We know their presence 

by the senses of temperature and pressure rather than by 
touch. 

b. No medium is to be considered in connection with 
touch; actual contact with solids is necessary to stimulate 
the nerve terminals that one may have primary sensations 
of touch. 

III. a. The simplest knowledge through the sense of Knowledge, 
touch is that of contact. Next most simple is that of smooth 

and rough. Still more complex are classed coarse, polished, 
damp, sticky, oily. For all except the simplest knowledge, 
motion and pressure as well as contact are necessary. 



58 Lessons in Psychology 

b. It is commonly thought that we know hardness by the 
sense of touch. Critically speaking, however, this is not the 
ease. 

It is true that we know certain types of hardness by the 
sense of resistance, but the physical quality of hardness is 
more complex than the simple sensation of resistance. This 
quality is defined as that which matter has of resistance to 
being scratched or having its particles torn apart. The 
diamond scratches glass, therefore it is harder than glass. 

The way to determine the hardness of a material is to 
test it by another material. If it is scratched by that other, 
it is softer than it; if it scratches the other, it is harder. 
The sense of touch alone, by the simple process of contact 
would never determine this quality of hardness or softness. 



The muscular jy. The muscular sense involves the muscles, skin, joints, 

sense. Organs. 7 7 «j 7 

ligaments, and tendons. 

Objects. y Matter in any form, solid, liquid, or gaseous may 

start the excitation of the nerves that results in sensations 
of effort and pressure. It may be started also, by any mo- 
tion of the body. 

Knowledge. yj ^ ^hc two distiuct elements involved in movements 

of the muscles are first, sensations of effort and second, 
sensations of resistance. Through these sensations we have 
a knowledge of force and extension. 

b. The muscular sense is developed very early. It makes 
our ideas of the activity of the muscles of the body as con- 
cerned in movement and balancing. Perhaps a child's first 
ideas of the self as active come as soon as the limbs are 
moved. This experience would be the beginning of atten- 
tion, as well as the first knowledge of the external world, 
and ultimately the ideas both of mental and of physical 
force. 



Sensations 59 

c. Taken alone, however, the muscular sensations give us 
little knowledge. Without touch and sight, movements of 
the body are co-ordinated in only a vague way. 

******* 

VII. The temperature sense has its end apparatus in the '^g^p^^^^J^l 
skin. " Temperature spots," minute points, the terminals O'^e^"- 

of nerves, some for heat and others for cold, are scattered 
over the skin in varying degrees of nearness to each other, 
with consequent variations in the delicacy of perception. 

VIII. The stimulus of the temperature spots results in Knowledge, 
mind in sensations of warm and cool, hot and cold. 



IX. As the name organic implies, these sensations are lo- Organic 

sensations. 

calized in the different internal organs of the body, as the 
muscles, the nerves, the circulatory and nutritory tracts, 
the glands, the heart, the lungs. 

X. The sources of excitation of the nerves connected Mode of 
with these organs are often in injuries or disease, often in 
some form of well-being. 

XI. a. Some classes of organic sensations that we dis- Knowledge, 
criminate are : 

1. Muscular: cramp, spasm, pains that are acute, intense, 
racking, burning, shooting, pricking, smarting, aching, 
stunning, rheumatic ; pains of muscular fatigue, and pleas- 
urable sensations of repose, falling to sleep. 

2. Nervous : fatigue and exhaustion, neuralgic sensations, 
weakness, prostration, ennui, heaviness, dullness, exhilara- 
tion, elation, irritability. 

3. Sensations connected with nutrition: hunger, thirst, 
repletion, indigestion, nausea, relish. 

4. Sensations connected with circulation : those arising 
from stricture, from long confinement in one posture, the 
prickly sensations of one's foot asleep. "The sleek, fat. 



60 Lessons in Psychology 

full-blooded temperament has its peculiar mental tone, 
attributable to the circulation and nutrition rather than 
to the quality of the nerves." (A. Bain, " Mental 
Science.") 

5. Sensations connected with respiration are suffocation 
of varying degrees, grateful freshness, buoyancy, fainting, 
bracing. 

b. All organic sensations undoubtedly reduce to more or 
less complex groups of those we know at the surface of the 
body as pressure, temperature, and pains. 

c. The organic sensations are not of a high order intel- 
lectually. Yet, these vague feelings of bodily comfort or 
discomfort are of great value in mental life since they fonn 
the background of our emotional condition. " They indi- 
cate an elevated or depressed condition of bodily vitality 
and give general cast to our state of mind. The dyspeptic 
soon becomes unreasonable or gloomy, and biliousness in- 
terferes with the normal activity of the mind." (J. M. 
Baldwin, ''Hand-book of Psychology.") 

Application Step.— I. Which are harder, metals or 
minerals ? 

" Metals," did you say? No, we use minerals to scour 
metals, therefore minerals must be the harder. 

II. Study touch, pressure, and temperature sensations in 
connection with the identification of different kinds of food 
in the mouth. 

III. Analyze many movements of different parts of the 
body in the terms of joint, tendon, and muscular sensations. 

IV. Watch for secondary organic sensations in trains of 
association : as, the remembrance of the thrill that followed 
the sight of the flag; the qualm that followed the imagina- 
tion of a sharp blade drawn through the hand ; the peculiar 



Sensations 61 

inner shudder that followed the sight or touch of a writh- 
ing snake. 

V. We extend the senses of touch and resistance (that is, 
we experience smooth, rough, and pressure) through the 
hair, the teeth, the clothing, the sleeve, the sole of the boot, 
the hat, the pen and paper, the walking-stick, the fishing- 
rod, the building — ( I can feel through resistance sensations 
the nature of the vehicle in the street when it passes over 
some pipes laid there that connect with this building). 

The sense of temperature is supplemented by the ther- 
mometer ; the sense of pressure by the scales. All machines, 
however simple or complicated are devices for changing the 
direction of force, either of the muscles or for the advantage 
of the muscles. 

VI. As might be expected in connection with so funda- 
mental a sense as touch, a great number of our primitive, 
instinctive fears are touch fears and complexes of them. 
Spencer's theory of the development of the eye as antici- 
patory touch to avoid sudden contact, and the definition of 
science as prevision organized to enable man to anticipate 
shock from afar indicate the sensitiveness of the organism 
during the course of evolution to injurious contacts and its 
wonderful power of adaptation to its environment. 

VII " The true beginning for a psychology essentially 
genetic is hunger, the first sentient expression of the will to 
live, which with love, its other fundamental cjuality, rules 
the world of life, * * * every organ is in a sense a 
digestive organ * * * and man is what he eats and 
what he completely digests * * * gH fins, legs, wings, 
and tails were developed either to get food or to escape 
finding a grave in some other creature's stomach * * * 
Some two-thirds or more of all the kinetie energy of the 
human body goes to digestion * * *. In the slow pro- 



6^ Lessons in Psychology 

cess of cephalization by which the brain and centers develop 
near the month end of the alimentary canal, the first laugh, 
if Spencer is right, was in prospect of food." (The first 
nod, an affirmative biting toward food ; the first negation, a 
turning of the mouth away from food ; and the first kiss, a 
little bite.) "The great epoch marked by the descent of 
fire and cooking not only economized digestion and freed 
its energy for higher uses, but evolved hearth, home, and 
mealtimes * * *. Every cell and tissue has its own 
specific hunger, and what we call appetite is a symphony of 
many parts or a net algebraic result aggregated from the 
specified hunger of all the tissues and cells * * *. Sen- 
sation and perhaps thought, are in one sense functions of 
nutrition. If the parts and molecules latest to develop and 
most distinctively human, being more complex than others, 
* * * are broken down in the function of thought and 
feeling, we can well understand that the nervous system, 
which is the master tissue of the body, may be the seat 
of the highest complexity, where matter is most nearly 
transubstantiated into soul * * *. In a sense every 
disease is due to cell hunger, and old age and death are 
progressive starvation. Most of the diseases of middle 
and later life are pj-obably due to avoidable errors of diet." 
(G. Stanley Hall, "Adolescence.") 



CHAPTER. Ill 

PERCEPTION 

Lesson I 

DEFINITION OF PERCEPTION 

Preparation Step.— I. The stream of thought is a imit. 
We may study it, however, from many diiferent stand- 
points. Just as we may look at the capitol from the side 
of its architectural features, its use, or its history, always 
remembering that it is the same building, so we may con- 
sider the same thoughts under such' aspects as associations, 
sensations, memories, or attention. We must not mistake 
the standpoints, however, for separate " faculties," since 
no faculties can be separated from the action and interac- 
tion of sensations in the stream of thought. 

When we studied our thoughts from the point of view of 
associations, we were thinking of the relations that exist 
between their elements; when from that of sensations, we 
were thinking of the elements themselves. - 

Our study in this lesson will be from the standpoint of 
perception. 

II. Name the parts of the room and the objects in it. 
Would there be anything left of the room if all that you 
have named were taken away? If there would be, keep on 
naming till you have exhausted it alJ. 

Each object has a place in space and a definite relation to 
other objects. You think of each one now, you remember 
to have seen it in the past, and can imagine that you will 
or will not see it in the future, and thus. each one has also 
definite time relations. 



64 Lessons in Psychology 

Name, next, and think of all the objects and parts of the 
house ; of the city ; the state ; the earth ; all your universe. 

Everything you have thought of is matter in space, and 
it all goes to make up your outer world. It all has the un- 
iversal properties of matter, such as weight, porosity, divisi- 
bility, inertia, impenetrability, indestructibility. 

III. In order to have the sensation of a burn on the back 
of my hand, the nerve terminals there must be excited, the 
vibrations must be carried along the length of the nerve 
through my arm and spinal cord to the brain, and there 
must be a result in mind, a sensation of pain, a burn. 

Suppose that the nerves and brain-cells here involved 
had always been excited in just the same way, would there 
be thinkable any sensation resulting in mind? Surely not. 
There must be a change in the physical condition and a con- 
sciousness of the change in mind in order that a sensation 
may be in mind. 

IV. Where are all the sensations that you have noticed 
and studied"? Is it not clear from your analysis of what 
precedes each one that all sensations of whatever kind are 
in your mind? 

V. And when are they all 1 Has not every one that you 
have ever experienced been in the present ? The burn which 
I remember iioiv to have had a moment ago was present 
then. 

VI. We are naively conscious of objects as units, or 
wholes only, until our attention is called to the fact that all 
objects are groups of sensations. 

Presentation Step.— I. What sensations does it take 
to make the pencil in your hand? 

You say it takes color sensations of red, brown, gray; 
sensations of touch and resistance, smoothness, weight, and 



Perception 65 

the peculiar pressure of rubber; smell sensations of cedar 
and rubber; flavor sensations of cedar. 

That you may have sensations, consciousness of difference 
is necessary. But given the sensations you have named 
above, that is, just the results in mind of colors, touches, 
tastes, and smells, you could not make the pencil. In order 
to make it the sensations, in addition, must be grouped in 
time and space relations. That is, there must be a con- 
sciousness of whereness and whenness, or time and space, 
in which the sensations are definitely grouped. The red of 
this group, for example, is not out in the street yesterday, 
but in a certain definite relation to the grays and browns 
to make the single complex, my pencil, now. 

II. Analyze many objects following the order indicated 
above : 

1. Name the sensations that make the object for the 
moment ; 

2. In order to have these elements, there must be a con- 
sciousness of each sensation as difi^erent from the imme- 
diately preceding one ; 

3. In order to have perception, time and space must be 
thought ; 

4. The sensations must be realized as definitely grouped, 
associated, or synthesized in times and spaces to make ob- 
jects, wholes, units. 

III. The above order does not imply that our original 
experience is at first made of singular elements, that is, 
that in childhood we have only sensations, that then for a 
time we are conscious of the sensations in time and space, 
and finally in definite time and space relations. 

Nor does it imply that in making my shears I have at one 
moment sensations, at the next, consciousness of space, and 
so on. My experience from the beginning is of undistin- 
5 



66 Lessons in Psychology 

guished and undiscriminated complexity. I know my shears 
not as a group of sensations but as a single object. 

But though these dilt'erent steps are not chronologically 
successive, in the process of analyzing perception as a 
psychological fact they must be considered as logically suc- 
cessive and in the above definite order. That is, we cannot 
think of sensations as grouped till we can think time and 
space in which to group them. Nor can we think time and 
space before we think sensations to limit them. Nor again, 
can we know sensations in undifferentiated continuum. 
Though in experience the three steps are a simultaneous 
synthesis, in analyzing each object logically one must think 
them as we have outlined them. 

IV. We are not concerned here with the origin of the 
ideas of difference, time, space, and grouping. We have 
only to notice these forms as characteristic of all the sen- 
sations that make the outer world, many of the parts of 
which you have named and analyzed. 

V. All the parts of your physical world, all the congeries 
of objects you have thought of and named are at any and 
all moments made of sensuous elements. 

VI. The process of making our outer world out of sensa- 
tions in time and space relations is perception. . 

Application Step.— I. It is somewhat difficult to realize 
that anything so complicated as our experience of the outer 
world is really made out of sensation stuff. I must beg of 
you to dwell patiently on the analysis of objects and acts 
of all kinds and to try to realize that these same sensations 
are the vague undifferentiated matrix out of which all the 
richness of the qualitative variety in our world is 
elaborated. 

II. What is the difference between the sensation red and 
the perception red of my pencil ? 



Perception 67 

The sensation red is the result in mind of the excitation 
of brain cells, the perception is the red-of-the-pencil-now- 
in-my-hand. 

That is, the presentative element of my experience is the 
sensation, and this sensation-in-its-time-and-space-relations 
is the percept. 

So far as we can think we never have sensations that 
have not a "whereness" and a "whenness," that is, that 
are not at the same time perceptions. 

III. You formerly thought perhaps of the "percept" of 
the pencil as a tixed, unchangeable, static entity, which 
came to mind whenever you needed it, a group of sensations 
that you carried about with you always the same. A little 
reflection on the objects of your world, however, will show 
you that you probably never have two thoughts of an object 
just alike", or two groups of sensations that are exactly 
similar. There seems indeed to be nothing static about 
consciousness. 

Since my "percept" is really a small part of the process 
of perception, the indefinitely rapid grouping of sensations 
in time and space relations, the term is a needless distinc- 
tion in psychology. 

IV. The stream of thought must not be understood to 
mean merely the superficial thoughts that flit through the 
mind. Since will action is one of its aspects, we have to 
realize that at any moment our acts are groups of sensations. 
For the muscles and other parts of the body are known and 
controlled only in the terms of mind. 

V. Analyze from the standpoint of perception many 
movements of dififerent parts of the body in the terms of 
joint, tendon, and muscular sensations. After you have 
made a thorough concrete study of the effects of insensi- 
bility in the joints and tendons of the ankles, knees, waist 
and backbone, neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, hand, and fin- 



68 Lessons in Psychology 

gers, you will have a clearer idea of muscular movemeut as 
groups of sensations. 

Lesson II 

THE OUTER AND INNER ORDERS OF THE STREAM OF THOUGHT 

Preparation Step.— I. Imagine the cone of a searchlight 
on the nightboat, for example, as it sweeps over the city of 
Albany and the banks of the Hudson River. In the dark- 
ness the city does not exist in the terms of color. The 
searchlight, when it flashes out, makes the streets, buildings, 
and trees in the terms of greens, grays, browns, and reds. 

II. In your trains of association you have found all mem- 
bers after the first to be recalled, or secondary. These 
secondary members form your inner world, — that part of 
your experience that no one else shares with you. 

III. Ask someone to think of the color of the building in 
which you are : How are you ever going to find out of what 
he is thinking? You can never by any possibility get in- 
side his mind to find out, certainly. 

IV. You no doubt remember having learned in physics 
that the rainbow you see is not the same one that your 
neighbor makes. Think about this fact and study out its 
explanation. 

V. The stream of thought is a succession of outer and 
inner experiences. Of which do you have a greater number, 
first members or subsequent members in the trains of 
association ? 

VI. Notice that the inner groups like the outer, physical 
ones are made out of sensations as elements. Analyze these 
secondary groups in the same Avay that you have analyzed 
those of the outer order. 

VII. Recall the pencil you analyzed in the last lesson. 
Image as vividly as you can the colors, pressures, touches, 



Perception 69 

and tastes that were primary then. How does the recalled 
color brown that you think of now differ from the primary 
brown of the pencil itself? 

The secondary brown is not so distinct as the primary, it 
is not so intense or lasting. 

Study as you may this and other sensations, about the 
only differences you can find between outer and inner sen- 
sations are those in intensity and duration ; and these dif- 
ferences are not always present. 

VIII. Sensations, whether they are primary or sec- 
ondary, are the result in mind of cerebral excitation. 

Presentation Step. — I. AYhat sensations does it take to 
make your paper? It takes grays, blues, reds, smoothness, 
and pressure in certain definite grouping in time and space. 

II. Now if all these grouped sensations that you have 
named were taken away, what would there be left ? 

"Why the paper, the matter," you say. 

But weight is one of the sensations we took away — and 
all the other properties of matter can be shown to be only 
more or less complex groups of sensations. All that we 
know of matter indeed is its properties, and they are all in 
the terms of mind. 

III. Think of your consciousness as like the searchlight 
in its action. In the darkness the city does not exist in the 
terms of color. The light literally makes all of it that we 
see out of greens, grays, browns, and reds of varying de- 
grees of brightness. 

So the mind seems to make the paper out of sensations, 
not of color alone, but of all kinds. 

(Psychology is not concerned with the consideration as 
to whether there is an extra-mental duplicate of the outer 
world always existing or with what there is "left" when 
sensations are not existing. 



70 Lessons in Psychology 

Different theories of metaphysics, however, have assumed 
that there is something aside from mind, a "permanent 
potentiality of matter," a "world-mind" or a '"ding an 
sich." Still another theory teaches that mind is governed 
by unchangeable, universal laws, according to which I and 
everyone else under like circumstances can make the paper. 
Read B. P. Bown: "Metaphysics," pp. 407 ff.). 

IV. And thus the mind of each person makes not only the 
paper as it is needed, but all the physical, " describable " 
world of city, country, the earth, the "heavens, and all 
that in them is." 

There must be, moreover, as many papers, as many 
worlds, as many spaces as there are minds, but in some 
way we think of our outer, describable world as always 
existing, one hard and fast physical world, shared by all 
alike and alike for all. 

(Astounding and incomprehensible as the fact that noth- 
ing thinkable is left of matter if no mind makes it at first 
seems, do not fear or fail to realize it literally and abso- 
lutely. A clear comprehension of the metaphysics of it is 
a great help to an understanding of the psychology of 
perception. ) 

VI. Our outer world, then, is made up of sensations in 
time and space relations. This outer world, moreover, can 
be distinguished from our inner world only by the grouping 
of the sensations. The group that for the moment makes 
my pencil fits in with the stream of sensations that has been 
distinguished as my outer order always. A recalled image 
of the pencil that I may have later will not belong to the then 
outer order, but it will ' ' dovetail ' ' in with the inner order. 

VII. We have come in some way that we cannot now de- 
termine to form the habit of making out of sensations the 
same in kind without confusion the two orders of our life, 
outer and inner, "physical" and "mental, "—two orders 



Perception 71 

apparently different with now one present and again the 
other, yet forming a single stream of thought. 

Application Step.— I. Though most psychologists admit 
that the sensuous material of the outer and the inner order 
is qualitatively one and the same, it is customary to limit the 
application of the term perception to the formation of the 
outer order. 

There seems to be no difference in kind, however, on 
which to base this distinction. 

The question is of importance here only when one strives 
to realize that the whole stream of thought is the action and 
interaction of sensations the same in kind. 

II. Groups of sensations may be now of the inner order, 
now of the outer, and again mixed, or fused. Of the differ- 
ent groups that are my pencil, for example, one may be at 
the same time an object, the first member of a train of as- 
sociation; another of the inner order only. The group 
always has enough sensations that have been in my mind 
before with the thought, "my pencil," so that I can recog- 
nize it each time. 

I have as many different "perceptions" of the pencil, 
then, as I have experiences with it or thoughts about it. 

III. Is it not strange that though the secondary members 
of trains of association, that is, inner thoughts outnumber 
outer ones overwhelmingly, is it not strange, that, as one 
thinks over uncritically the last hour it seems to be made 
up of outer experiences only? 

IV. What parts of your world do you habitually make in 
the terms of taste, smell, touch, resistance, and temperature 
sensations? In the terms of touch and resistance sensa- 
tions? In what terms do you think of the inside of the 
toe of your boot ? Of your hat on your head ? Of the inside 
of your pocket ? 



72 Lessons in Psychology 

V. The stream of thought, whatever else it is, seems to 
be the "epiphenomenon" of the brain condition, and this 
condition is a resultant blended of all the factors of the 
present stimuli as modified by the brain's past history, 
individual, ancestral, and racial. 

"All we know of submaximal nerve-irritations, and of 
the summation of apparently ineffective stimuli, tends to 
show * * * ^jjg^ presumably »o -changes in the brain 
are bare of psj^chological result." (James, "Psychology," 
Vol. I.) 

VI. Do you see that each person makes not only his own 
rainbow, but in just the same way, his own house, city, 
world, body, acts, friends, everything? 

Dwell on the fact of how individual a matter a mind is. 
"No man" indeed "knoweth the things of a man save the 
spirit of the man that is in him." 

VII. Can we ever really, know another person ? Every 
one about us is for "us body and soul, our own creation and 
construction. 

What the incitement is that makes us make different 
people as we do is a question with which we are not here 
concerned. The important matter is the comprehension of 
the fact that we do so make them. 

VIII. To the ordinary consciousness there is the mind 
within and the great world of hard and fast facts outside. 
And to the psychologist the same is true, except that the 
psychologist realizes that both are made of the same kind 
of stuff. 

The fact that the outer order is mental should not make 
it seem any the less real, stable, reliant, orderly. It is never 
capricious. Since it is as I make it, I might think that, if I 
wished, I could have a goldpiece in my hand now. I must 
not think it, however, for no matter how hard I try, my 
imagination will not make it there as a group of sensations 



Perception 73 

fitting in with my present outer order. I know as a result 
of lifelong experience what must be in my physical world, 
and ordinarily I do not try to make other things there. 

IX. By the processes of perception and thought each in- 
dividual guided by the discoverer builds up and formulates 
for himself the sciences of physics, astronomy, and all other 
groups of classified knowledge, out of this world that we 
make. We can never get outside our minds to find out what 
the laws that govern us really are— they are as unattainable 
as Plato's "types laid up in heaven," or as the German 
"things in themselves," but the sciences that are formu- 
lated are the human mind's best guesses at these laws and 
attempts to classify them. 

Lesson III 

INFERENCES IN PERCEPTION 

Preparation Step.— Some of the inferences that have 
been assumed in the study of perception should be made 
explicit. 

I. Notice some of the facts that you say you see in con- 
nection with the space relations of objects: You say you 
see that the reading-glass is round ; that its lense is curved ; 
its handle cylindrical ; that it is large. You "see" that the 
shears are pointed ; that the book has angles ; that the 
table is round. You "see" that the window-seat is two 
feet wide; that the wall is ten feet distant; that there is 
space between the houses across the street. 

You "see," also, that it rains; that the car moves; that 
the wind blows ; that the bread is done ; that the reading- 
glass is made of wood, nickel, and glass ; that the table is 
polished; that fruit looks good; that a friend looks ill. 

A little thought will show you that you do not literally 
see one of these thinas. 



74 Lessons in Psychology 

II. You say that you hear a car passing in the street ; that 
you hear your name called ; that you hear a person say that 
it rains. 

And here again you do not literally say what you mean. 

III. The perspective of scenery in the theatre, the fres- 
coes on the walls of many buildings, deceive us easily,— the 
distance is inferred from the representation of depth on a 
flat surface. 

IV. I heard some music yesterday. To-day is a holiday, 
but to-morrow will not be a holiday. Last year at this time 
there was snow on the ground. I am going to the play Sat- 
urday night, and it is now Monday. 

These events are all thought of as belonging to a more 
or less definite time. 

V. Go over your own thoughts tracing the trains of as- 
sociation involved in experiences similar to those given 
above; for example, (1). A group of colors; (2. Thought 
words) It rains. — (1). A group of sounds; (2. Thought 
words) It rains. — (1). A group of temperature and press- 
ure sensations; (2. Thought words) It rains. 

You would ordinarily say in these cases, first, "I see that 
it rains;" second, "I hear it rain," and third, "I feel the 
rain." 

Presentation Step. — I. AVhen one says that he sees that 
the knife is sharp, what does he really see 1 Is sharpness a 
result in mind from the excitation of the optic nerve? Of 
course not. It is a result of the excitation of the nerves of 
touch. 

In this person 's mind a certain group of color sensations, 
(steel color, lustre, grays) that has been in consciousness 
before with the touch sensations and the thought word, 
sharp, is now followed by the same thoughts. Therefore 
he says that he "sees" that the knife is sharp. 



Perception 75 

In the same way he may infer by association from a group 
of colors that the lamp is spherical ; that it is two feet dis- 
tant ; that it is in front of him ; that it is symmetrical, grace- 
ful in shape ; that it is one yard from the window. He may 
infer by associations before established with a group of 
sound sensations that the can of the lamp is filled ; that the 
shade is of glass ; that it is near and in front of him. 

Practically all our knowledge of space relations, such as 
the distance, direction, extent of movement, shape, size, and 
position of objects is a matter of the association of touch, 
muscular sensations, colors, and sounds among themselves 
and with words. 

II. I say that I heard my name spoken. What I really 
heard was a group of sound sensations only. These by pre- 
viously established association were followed by the thought 
word, "Cousin." 

Thus it is with all language we hear spoken. It is only 
sounds, absolutely meaningless except as we supply mean- 
ing by association. In reading, also, all that we see is color 
sensations,— we must supply all the thoughts. 

III. We also associate with color, sound, and touch 
groups, the names of objects, materials, qualities, quantities, 
acts, events to a degree incredible to us until we have made 
a study of these inferences. 

IV. How do I know that the music I heard yesterday was 
sung yesterday and not two years ago ? 

I know that I heard it yesterday because every hour not 
only of yesterday, but of my whole life has been known as 
time only by being filled with events, groups of sensuous 
elements, my stream of thought. Whatever time has not 
been filled has not existed for me. 

The stream of thought that made the time of yesterday 
has in many places the thought of Christmas Day, not Sat- 
urday. Nor do I go to church on Friday. Two years ago 



76 Lessons in 1'svchology 

I went to church, but I did not hear the Neidlinger Carol 
sung. The group of sounds that makes the music fits in 
with other sensations, that, all together, make the duration 
of yesterday, sensations, any part of which I recognize or 
recall as belonging to yesterday. 

In five days it will be New Year's Day. The ideas that 
make that day do not fit in with any that have made an 
outer order in the past, therefore I judge that it will be in 
the future. 

The actual present, the meeting-place between the past 
and the future, has no duration. We know an event as 
present, in the same way that we know the past and the 
future, from the relations of ideas. 

All our knowledge of time relations, that is, time, 
rhythm, frequency, rate is a matter of the association of 
ideas. 

V. Thus we see that only a small part of our so-called 
knowledge of the outer world is direct perception. Follow- 
ing primary sensations there flash into our minds associa- 
tions about space and time relations as well as a bewilder- 
ing multiplicity of identifying associations that make the 
primary sensations usable by us. 

Application Step.— I. Watch the experience of a child 
in learning distances and shapes, that is, in establishing 
associations among groups of colors, touches, arm 's lengths, 
paces, and words. 

I know a child who cried for the moon. She really thought 
it was against the Avindow. Certain colors had been in her 
mind before with the ten-paces-distant window, so that a 
visual image of these colors again was followed by the in- 
ference that the moon was in the window. 

A man told me that when he was a little chap he lived 
where he could see railwav trains cross a river bridge at 



Perception 77 

some distance from his home. These trains, of course, 
looked small to him though they did not seem far away. 
They later passed his home, but he could not see where the 
tracks turned, and so did not know that they, the cars, were 
the same. 

He often wondered, he said, why those little trains that 
he saw on the bridge, trains like the toy-cars he dragged 
around the yard after him, never came by his house. You 
see he had not associated the distance of six city blocks with 
the sight complexes that made the trains on the bridge. 

Try to realize by constant concrete observation how com- 
plex a composite the space relations of your outer world 
that you have built up hour by hour since childhood— try 
to realize how complex a composite these relations are. 

II. What advantage would it be to us to be more accurate 
and adequate in our associations of space measurements? 
to estimate, for example, at a glance the size of the park as 
seventy acres ; to be able to imagine how an animal five feet 
high would look; a fall of water two hundred feet high; 
a mountain 5000 feet high, a bird four inches long. 

III. As we grow up and grow older the function of pri- 
mary sensations becomes more and more merely to "touch 
off" the complexes. Only a few elements of our experience 
are of the outer order ; the rest of a group is supplied from 
the inner order. 

A good example of this fact is our experience in reading : 
Cover the lower half of a line of print and read it. Then 
cover the upper half of another line and read it. 

Which of the two did you read more readily"? Unless 
your experience differs from that of others, you will have 
read the first more easily. 

In hasty reading we form the habit of making only the 
tops of the letters as of the outer order and supplying the 
rest as secondary, though we are not conscious of this fact 



78 Lessons in Psychology 

till attention is called to it. 'Slost adults would say that 
they see the whole word on the page. Because they so 
rarely do, children make better proof-readers than adults. 

IV. It is thought that in early mental evolution con- 
sciousness was primary, all outer. As experience grew, 
secondary ideas appeared, and as they were found useful 
to supplement the primary experience their store increased. 
Lastly, as language developed, the mere symbol came to 
take the place of the group of sensations. 

And as we grow older our stream of thought comes to be 
in some instances almost entirely in the terms of language. 

V. Though ordinarily we make our inner and our outer 
order without confusion and with apparent truth, we are 
sometimes inadequate to our outer world. As we occasion- 
ally fill out the rest of a word or a sentence in reading in- 
correctly, so we make mistakes now and then in filling out 
other groups. 

A young lady recently entered a room where she saw a 
small parcel done up in oiled paper. After a few minutes 
she said, ' ' I smell violets. How sweet they are ! ' ' The 
flowers in the paper were odorless mountain daisies. There 
was perhaps about them some little fragrance of the green 
house, and Miss S. had completed the few outer elements — 
by secondary elements, so that she smelled violets distinctly. 

VI. This odor was an illusion, and the experience 
may be taken as a type of illusions. It is probable that 
there are always some few sensations that touch off the 
complex, and perhaps far oftener than we realize, our per- 
ceptions are filled out in the wrong way. 

Make a study of the extent to which emotions, desires, 
moods, the fixedness of an idea, and prepossessions influence 
our illusions. 

VII. "The whole world of reality, as well as that of 
knowledge, may be considered as one system, embracing 



Perception 79 

within the unity of its totality all the various systems with 
their complicated parts. From this point of view every- 
thing bears relations to everything else in the universe." 

"Inference (in higher thought) consists in interpreting 
the implications of the system to which the given in con- 
sciousness belongs." 

"He only sees well who sees the whole in the parts and 
the parts in the whole. ' ' 

A child at first sees only immediate relations. His chief 
business is the collection of material in which he feels only 
the more necessary and obvious connections. With advancing 
maturity he is able to feel relations more and more remote. 
"It is therefore the w^ell-furnished mind which sees things 
as most widely related, and discerns the potential as well 
as the actual manifestation, which will prove the most fer- 
tile in accurate inference, in prophetic suggestion, and in 
inventive resource." (J. G. Hibben, "Inductive Logic.) 



CHAFER IV 

MEMORIES 

Lesson I 

RETENTION 

Preparation Step.— I. Recall a face that you saw yes- 
terday on the street ; image it vividly. Recall the sounds 
of a band that you heard last summer; the smell and flavor 
of the coffee that you drank for breakfast; the touch and 
pressure of fur that you wore at some particular time last 
winter ; the temperature and organic sensations of the last 
over-heated room you entered ; the sensations of a burn, an 
electric shock, a headache. 

Recall at your leisure definite scenes and experiences in 
the terms of as many senses as possible from each year of 
your life as far back as you can remember. Take time to 
get a definite idea in each case and image each one 
vividly. 

II. Notice that the secondary image of the face that you 
saw yesterday on the street, (as well as all the other secon- 
dary images recalled above) is a group of sensations 
definitely arranged, and that it has the definite time, space, 
and other relations to other groups that the primary image 
had. 

One face, for example, that I recall having seen is that 
of a young woman : the flesh tints, a definite group of color 
sensations, are surrounded by the grays of her prematurely 
white hair; I recall that she wore a black suit; I saw her 
against the background of a shop window; the time was in 
the morning — and so on. — I may reproduce a large number 
of relations in which this Tiarticular visual image was set. 



Memories 81 

All the groups of sensations that you have recalled have, 
in the same way, the same settings that they had as primary 
groups. 

III. The law of associations from the standpoint of brain- 
cells, you remember, states, that ' ' brain-cells that have been 
excited together tend the more readily to fall into a like 
state of commotion when part of them is again excited." 

The law describes the mode of action not of brain-cells 
alone, but of the elements of the whole body as well. 

IV. Recall what your physiology taught you about the 
three parts of your brain. Point out as definitely as you 
can in your own skull the medulla oblongata, the cerebellum, 
and the cerebrum, and imagine their successive evolution 
from the spinal cord. 

V. Matter, both inorganic and organic, is modified by 
every slightest change in it. The effects of every change, 
moreover, are permanent. In the case of bodily modification, 
where the elements are undergoing perpetual renewal, the 
form persists. An insignificant scar on the skin, for ex- 
ample, remains throughout life. An indefinite number of 
bodily changes too minute for the senses to detect yet in 
their effects last always. 

Presentation Step. — I. Let us take for concrete study 
your memory of the music of a band that you heard last 
summer. Recall the sounds clearly, and get back as much 
of the setting as possible. 

Where has this group of sound sensations been since 
that day? 

"In my memory," you say. 

But where is that"? What do you think of when you 
think of your memory? Perhaps of a sort of receptacle 
filled with pigeon-holes. But where are the pigeon-holes 
of memory *? 
6 



82 Lessons in Psychology 

"In my mind," you say, "in unconsciousness or sub- 
consciousness. ' ' 

But how do you know this fact? No one has ever been 
in his unconscious or sub-conscious mind to see that there 
is such a place. 

Is it not, after all, in order to account for the presence 
of these sounds in your mind now that you are so sure that 
they have been somewhere? If, then, we can account for 
the secondary image of the music in some other way, you 
will no longer need to think of mental states as carried 
about in unconsciousness. And we can so account for the 
recalled sounds. 

The only answer you can give, then, to the question where 
the sounds have been, is, "I don't know. They went out 
of existence, so far as I can tell, when they left my con- 
sciousness that day." 

II. To understand how you can recall the music now, 
think of what took place that you might hear the sounds 
last summer : Vibrations reached and excited the auditory 
nerve, and this excitation was transmitted to brain-cells 
with the result in mind of the melody. Some one said to you, 
"Music in the Gardens — the band is playing." The entire 
group of sensations fitted together with others making a 
stream of thought, any part of which is recognized as last 
summer's experience. 

III. When the brain-cells resulting in the thought words, 
"Music last summer," are now stimulated in connection 
with my request, according to the law of habit the cells that 
vibrated before with them are excited again with the result 
in mind of sound sensations like those you then heard. 

Such is the process by which the secondary or ' ' recalled ' ' 
material of the stream of thought is made. For convenience 
in analysis, I shall classify the steps of the process loosely 



Memories 83 

as those of Retention, Reproduction, and Recognition. ( The 
last two are considered in Lessons II and III.) 

IV. First as to Retention : The word means to keep, 
to hold from escape. What is it that is kept, and where 
is it keptt 

The sounds of the music when you ceased to be conscious 
of them, or forgot them went out of existence, so that they 
are not retained; the brain, however, has been so modified 
by the original stimulus that its cells have the disposition, 
when some of them are restimulated, to respond again in 
the same way as at first. The place of retention is, then, 
the brain. 

And as to what is retained or kept, it is neither secsations 
nor mental states, but it is the tendency, or disposition of 
the elements of the body. 

Retention, then, is a matter of the disposition of elements 
of the brain that have been modified together at some pre- 
vious time, when a part of them is stimulated again to 
respond together. 

Application Step.— I. It is thought that retention (the 
physical tendencies) is perfect for everybody. Is it not 
strange, then, that we have so little use in thought of the 
great wealth of its stores ? That we forget so much and so 
often? 

II. A little closer approach to the problem of nerve and 
brain structure will show us something of the economy of 
forgetting. 

The nerve cell, the ultimate center of nervous activities, 
is the storehouse of nervous energy. It is exceedingly 
minute in size and in almost infinite numbers composes the 
gray matter of the brain and spinal cord. This cell is a 
mass of protoplasm, grayish in color; it contains a nucleus 



84 Lessons in Psychology 

and branches out into infinitely numerous processes, or 
fibres of two kinds. Those of one kind, long and medullated 
are the afferent and efferent nerves ; those of the other kind 
are short and non-medullated. Each central nerve cell, 
with its fibrillar offshoots, is an isolated entity. 

As to the process of functioning, each filament jutting out 
from a cell is held to be a transmitter of impulses that 
operates intermittently, like a telephone wire that is not 
always "connected," and like that wire, the nerve fibril 
operates by contact and not by continuity. Under proper 
stimulation of nerves from the sense organ the ends of 
the fibrils reach out, come in contact with other end fibrils 
of other cells, and conduct their destined impulse. Again 
they retract, and communication ceases for the time between 
those particular cells. Fibrils thus connected, however, 
seem to retain the tendency to touch again on the occasion 
of a similar restimulus of one of them. 

Meantime, by a different arrangement of the various 
conductors, different sets of cells are placed in communica- 
tion, different associations of nervous impulses induced, 
different trains of thought result. 

According to this conception "one can imagine, for ex- 
ample, by keeping in mind the flexible nerve prolongations, 
how new trains of thought may be engendered through 
novel associations of cells ; how facility of thought or of 
action in certain directions is acquired through the habitual 
making of certain nerve-cell connections ; how certain bits 
of knowledge may escape our memory, and refuse to be 
found for a time, because of a temporary incapacity of the 
nerve cells to make the proper connections; and so on 
indefinitely." (Henry Smith Williams, M. D. "The Cen- 
tury's Progress in Experimental Psychology." — Harper's 
Magazine, September, 1899. Read also, Henry Herbert 
Donaldson, "The Growth of the Brain.") 



Memories 



85 



III. All writers on the subject are now agreed that there 
is no such thing- as formal memory training. Nor is there 
any bump in the brain by enlarging which we can gam 
better or more retentive memories. 

IV. If it is true, moreover, that the law of contiguity 
governs not only the brain, but also the entire physical 
structure, then the whole body as well as the brain is the 
seat of retention. In the human organism, however, excita- 
tion of the hemispheres is the essential cerebral condition 
of memory and foresight. 

If all retention were obliterated in the cerebrum alone, 
one could recall no conscious sensations, none of the 
thoughts involved in higher intelligence and volition. If 
retention were obliterated in the cerebellum, also, one would 
have forgotten the co-ordination of muscular contraction. 
The staggering of drunkenness, for example, is due to the 
partial paralysis of the cerebellum. 

In the medulla originate the nerves controlling the most 
vital functions of the body, so that if retention here were 
obliterated our nerves would forget to control the lungs for 
breathing and to beat the heart, thus life could not continue. 

The fact is practically established that in fatigue, brain- 
fag, and with advancing years it is the sensitive higher 
centres that are atrophied first. The tendencies that have 
been longest established are, in general, retained most 
persistently. 

V. Make a study of habits. The eifect of repetition is to 
establish in the body dispositions, or tendencies to ever 
more ready response to a given stimulus with constant fad- 
ing of the accompanying mentality, so that, in time, our 
nerves and muscles alone do many things for us that before 
required consciousness. 

VI. Make a study of the relation between retention and 
heredity. 



86 Lessons in Psychology 

Heredity has been defined as race-retention. By it modes 
of structure in a parent organism -are transmitted to the off- 
spring, in the sense that (according to one theory of hered- 
ity) a tendency is imparted to embryonic cell structure to 
grow and develop into a structure like that of the parents. 

A member of a given family, no matter where he is 
brought up, will have the physical characteristics of his 
progenitors. The results in mind of the stimulus of similar 
organisms must be similar, and so one hears the remark 
that "Mary has her mother's disposition," or "John has his 
grandfather 's orderly ways. ' ' 

Trace the evolution of the human body ; of the brain and 
special senses. 

"Each present brain-state is a record in which the eye 
of Omniscience might read all the foregone history of its 
owner." (James, "Psychology," Vol. I.) 

' ' The whole nervous system is a single organ of sensation 
and its present state is a history of its life and the life of 
its progenitors. ' ' 

VII. It has been said that the children of uneducated 
races have to learn anew from the beginning ; those of edu- 
cated races have but to remember. What does the saying 
mean ? 

Lesson II 

REPRODUCTION 

Preparation Step.— I. If one has only the passive 
modifications of the body, retention, he has nothing in his 
mind, he is not thinking. Another step is necessary in 
order to think, that of Reproduction. 

II. Recall events that occurred when you were a child: 
Did you ever move from one house to another? From one 
city or place to another? What do you recall of houses, 
gardens, journeys, frocks, people, voices, plays, games? 



Memories 87 

What do you remember of your first day at school"? Of 
early schoolrooms and teachers? 

Recall early fears, as of the dark, getting lost, falling 
from high places, smothering. 

Can you recall among these early experiences many that 
are made of sound sensations? Of organic, muscular, 
smell, or temperature sensations ? 

III. I am thinking of a fireboard that I saw when I was 
a child. Retention has made it possible for me to keep the 
tendency then established in the brain cells to a certain 
sort of excitation. Let us say the line of excitation as 
shown by the resulting train of association is somewhat like 

this: a' b' c' d' and the train of association in mind, 

a. Visual image of paper; b. I must write more reminis- 
cences; c. I have often recalled Grandfather's house; d. 
Visual image of the fireboard there. 

IV. The result in mind of the excitation of brain cells, 
no matter how, is sensation. That is, the brain cells may be 
stimulated from the nerves and end organs, or, on the other 
hand, they may be excited in the course of associations. 
The result in mind is apparently the same in kind in both 
cases, a sensation. 

Presentation Step.— I. The picture on the fireboard is 
a group of sensations, blues, reds, and grays, representing 
two children playing by a stream. For some reason it ap- 
pealed to my childish imagination and I have always re- 
membered it. 

These colors result in mind now from the stimulus of the 
same brain-cells that were excited when I saw it. The com- 
motion is set up in them according to the law of habit. Let 
a', b', c', and d' represent the groups of brain cells involved 



88 Lessons in Psychology 

and the order of their stimulus. I say that I reproduce the 
visual image of the fireboard in its place d among the sec- 
ondary members of a train of associations, each member of 
which is the result in mind of the restimulus respectively 
of a', b', c', d', which are now vibrating according to the 
law of associations. 

To reproduce means to form again. The "reproduced" 
image, a result in mind of the restimulus of the same brain 
elements, seems really to be created anew each time we 
think of the experience. 

Reproduction is the process of restimulating certain 
brain-cells on the occasion of the re-excitation of brain-cells 
that were stimulated with them before, with a result in 
mind of sensations similar to those then experienced. 

Application Step. — I. Compare the reproduced images 
with the primary ones as to size, duration, clearness, dis- 
tinctness, adequacy. 

II. Animals retain experience only in accordance with 
the complexity of their structure,— thus they have not the 
power of free recall that enables the complex human mind 
to think, reflect, and act. 

III. One reason why we forget may be in the fact that 
the nerve cells are incapacitated to make proper con- 
nections. 

But there are certain indications that our inability to 
"recall" desired mental states is not always due to de- 
fective retention. The hypnotist, for example, has the art 
to cause his subject to repursue even lightly established 
paths of associations, such as would not result in mind 
ordinarily. 

Records of prodigies of memory performed by persons 
in delirium and impossible to ordinary consciousness also 
show the perfection even in severe illness of retention in 



Memories 89 

the nerve cells. Such facts as these seem to indicate that 
one cause of dilficulty in recalling is in the process of stim- 
ulating the brain paths. 

Schools, moreover, force us to "learn" so much material 
and to learn it so rapidly that only few and fleeting ten- 
dencies are established, and as a result we cannot find 
"cues" from the side of consciousness to start lines of 
stimulation. 

It seems probable that in proportion as mental effort in 
learning is merely formal, mechanical, or as it fails to in- 
volve interests, instincts, and dynamic factors in us, it 
blunts, instead of develops, the power to establish and to 
use the stores of retention and the consequent ability to 
think and act. 

IV. The body seems to go on doing work for us when the 
mind is not discriminating the thoughts. If we study to 
learn a song or a piece of poetry at night, even though we 
cannot remember to have recited it through the night, we 
can reproduce it in the morning more perfectly than we 
could when we left it last the night before. It is noticeable 
that in the spring one can ride a wheel, for example, better 
than one could at the close of the autumn before. The 
Germans have a proverb which says that ' ' we learn to swim 
in the winter and to skate in the simimer. ' ' 

These and kindred phenomena have been explained by 
the theory that the blood circulating in the tracts where 
association paths have been lightly established confirms 
these paths by refreshing and nourishing the cells. Thus 
the body working without explicit direction of the mind 
gains skill for us. 

V. The study of children shows that during the periods 
of infancy and childhood muscular co-ordination and men- 
tal development proceed hand in hand. 

In right-handed people many more co-ordinations of mus- 



90 Lessons in Psychology 

cles are established on the right side of the body than on 
the left side. It is also true that more thinking is done 
with the left hemisphere of the brain, which is the one 
that controls the right side of the body, than with the right. 

It is inferred from facts like these that perfect and com- 
plete muscular co-ordination exercises a profound influence 
on the development of the mind. 

This theory is one of the strongest arguments advanced 
for the introduction in schools of the right sort of manual 
training and all around physical training. 

VI. Suppose we could read the modifications of other 
people's brains and nervous systems. We might know all 
they thought, indeed be within their mind— a tempting con- 
ception to fiction. This fascinating accomplishment of 
sharing each others thoughts was possessed, you remember, 
by Peter Ibbetson and the Duchess. And Grant Allen 
wrote the tale of a youth who read consciously not only the 
brain records of other people, but also those remains estab- 
lished in his own organism by heredity from ancestors all 
the way back to the "hairy anthropoids on the jungle-clad 
banks of some tropical stream!" 

VII. Notice how subtle some of our ways of communica- 
tion are. We say that "a glance spoke volumes." "The 
turn of a hair," the contraction of a muscle, a fleeting ex- 
pression of the face may tell us a great deal. No doubt 
much that masks under the name of telepathy can be ex- 
plained in the terms of the senses and associations. 

VIII. When we think of it, all we know and are at any 
moment, all there is of any individual is just an infinitely 
complex succession of related sensations, a stream of 
thought, a constantly shifting present. Yet, in a sense, all 
one's life is now completely present ; try to realize anew that 
the mental condition of this moment is the complete liistory 
of one's past, individual, ancestral, and racial. 



Memories 91 

IX. Make a study in this connection of the responsibility 
of teachers in the matter of training children and estab- 
lishing in them lofty and etfective ideals. 

Lesson III 

RECOGNITION 

Preparation Step.— I. Recall some recent time when 
you walked in the street ; rode on a car, a train ; glanced in 
a shop-window; asked a question; shook hands with some 
one ; talked of the weather ; dined out. Recall the best time 
you have had recently. 

Image vividly the above experiences and analyze quickly 
the processes of association, retention, and reproduction by 
which it is possible for you to think each one. 

They are each and all groups of secondary sensations in 
time and space relations, the results in mind of the restimu- 
lus of brain-cells according to tendencies formerly 
established. 

II. With us all a great part of our daily experiences is 
never recalled. We remember what we need and the rest, 
though permanent in its influence, is lost in time to con- 
scious recall. 

Presentation Step.— Suppose for a minute that your 
thoughts came back in wrong time and space relations : that 
your recent "best time" was placed, say, in a dentist's 
chair instead of in a pew; that the last dinner out seemed 
to have been on Christmas Day instead of on New Year's 
Day; that it was thought of as at a hotel instead of at a 
friend 's home ; that a song sung to you was recalled as ad- 
dressed to some one else. 

With relationships changed in this way, should ,you recog- 
nize your "best time" or your last dinner out? Of course 



92 Lessons in Psychology 

you coiild not. Each group must be reinstated in its former 
relations to seem familiar. The last dinner out, say, must 
be thought of as on New Year's Day at Dr. B's with Miss 
B., her father, mother, and Mile I. only present. It was in 
the evening in a certain room and was followed by some 
music. 

And not only must the groups "dove-tail" with other 
groups but the sensations of each group must be reinstated 
in the same relations as before that we may know it again 
as a former experience. Professor James somewhere says 
that something seems "to click" when we recognize a 
thought. 

The color and other sensations that make the people, the 
lighted table, the flowers, the dishes, and the food must all 
be grouped in the same time and space relations (and logi- 
cal relations, or correlations, also) as formerly. The effect 
of all this reinstating of the elements of secondary exper- 
ience is that you recognize these ideas as the reproduction of 
your experience the last time you dined out. 

The feeling of familiarity in the process of reinstating 
sensations in their former relations is Recognition. 

Application Step.— I. One caution should be observed 
in your practice in analyzing memories, namely, do not 
confuse the steps : Retention is not reproduction, nor is 
it recognition. Reproduction is not recognition. Each 
step is logically distinct. 

II. Analyze your memories of many secondary thoughts 
daily somewhat in this way: I recall band music that I 
heard last summer. In order that I might hear it then, vi- 
brations from the instruments set the air in motion, this 
motion reached my ears, and excited my auditory nerve and 
successive brain-cells, with the result in mind of a melody 
played by a band. In order that I may think the same mel- 



Memories ' 93 

ody now, the same braiu-cells must be excited again. They 
are now excited in accordance with the law of habit, and 
the following mental states result in my stream of thought : 
(a) I saw my paper, (b) I thought I must write one com- 
plete analysis of memories, (c) I'll use the "band music," 
(d) secondary sounds of band music, (e) secondary visual 
image of a park and people. The elements of the secondary 
sounds are remstated m their former relations, these groups 
fit in with those of the scenes and people, and I recognize 
the tune as that played by the Highland Band in West 
Princes Street Gardens last summer. 

Retention was in the tendency of my brain-cells to be 
active as they were last summer even though I am no longer 
in Edinboro. 

The process of restimulating those brain-cells because 
others now active were active with them then, with the re- 
sult in mind of exactly similar sound sensations is 
Reproduction. 

The feeling accompanying the process of reinstating 
the sensations in their former relations is Recognition. 

(I must ask you to pardon so much repetition— but my 
excuse for it is that it is only in the constant analysis of 
different mental experiences that one can become familiar 
with the facts of psychology. I can promise you that the 
longer you work at it the more fascinating it becomes. ) 

III. Recognition is a relative matter. There are all de- 
grees of reinstatement of sensations in their former rela- 
tions, hence all degrees of recognition. I hummed to my- 
self, for example, the other day vaguely part of an air. It 
came to my mind several times afterward, when more and 
more sensations were reinstated and I decided that it was 
Gluck's aria, Euridice. I kept at work recalling more and 
more about it and reinstating all the material in its former 
relations, till I had the relatively complete recognition of 



94 Lessons in Psychology 

the aria as sung by Miss W. at the D. Club at Miss- M's 
house three years ago. 

Thus all thought is characterized by dift'erent degrees of 
recognition from the vaguest, most tieetiug recognition that 
the object before one is a child, not a chair — to the complete 
consciousness of all that is known of the given image. 

IV. Though the recognition of secondary experience only 
has been spoken of, the recognition of primary groups of 
sensations is a process the same in kind. 

V. The parts of all thought as it flows along are associ- 
ated with other parts, consequently recognized. An 
isolated thought is unthinkable. 

The fact that our mental life is coherent is perhaps the 
basis of our feeling of selfhood. 

It is by recognition through association that objects and 
experiences have meaning for us. "When a complex pro- 
cess holds together it has meaning. ' ' 

VI. Reproduction and Recognition in memory are just 
the process of Perception looked at from the aspect of the 
inner order. 

VII. The evolution of the process of recognition is 
interesting : 

"The mood of at-homeness or confidence is a weakened 
form of the emotion of relief. Fear of strange things and 
strange people is instinctive with man ; and it is a survival 
of fear unfulfilled, of relief, that we experience when we 
recognize * * *. It follows that every recognition is 
inherently pleasant. Oftentimes, it is true, the pleasantness 
of the at-home mood is outweighed by the unpleasantness 
of the associated ideas: we may recognize a person whom 
we particularly want to avoid." ("A Primer of Psychol- 
ogy," E. B. Titchener.) 



Memories 95 

Lesson IV 

MEMORY TRAINING 

Preparation Step.— I. It is the commonly accepted opin- 
ion that there is no such thing as formal memory training. 
To apply the generalizations of these lessons, however, to 
many particular cases, to look at mental life from many 
standpoints is desirable. And there are still several con- 
siderations of interest in connection with memories, which, 
with no implications as to formal training, can well be 
grouped under the above general head. 

II Why should one have a good memory! 

To have forgotten, say, the experienceSi of all the fore- 
noons of one 's life would be manifestly inconvenient. Think 
how much this loss would have troubled you to-day about 
the house, in the street, in all your relationships. But it 
would be more than inconvenient. 

Forgetfulness is fatal, in proportion as one suffers from 
it, to the attainment of his ideals, to his power of accom- 
plishment. It is not what one has in his note-books, or what 
he knows where to find in books of reference or from people, 
but what is available at the moment from his own potential 
mental store, what he can remember in the terms of thought 
and muscles that gives him ability, power to do. In fact, 
one measure of a person's ability at any moment is 
the readiness with which he has the use of his past exper- 
ience. In a sense we are limited in what we would do to 
what our memories of the past enable us to do. 

It is quite important, then, that one have potentially 
available all the wealth of knowledge in right relations and 
of muscular co-ordinations of his past that will make him a 
wise and capable man, or, in other words, that he have "a, 
good memory. ' ' 



96 Lessons in Psychology 

III. What are the qualities of a good memory'? If you 
could have your wish, what qualities would you choose? 

It would be of advantage to have a memory that is 
tenacious, retentive, ready, spontaneous, vivid, accurate, 
detailed, logical for some facts, mechanical for others— such 
are a few qualities usually named as belonging to a good 
memory. 

IV. In what respects is your memory good? In what, 
poor? Analyze it critically. 

V. Recall the loudest sound that you ever heard; the 
brightest light. In an experience with many students I 
have seldom found one who could recall these conditions. 

At first thought one is likely to say that intensity of sen- 
sations makes the difference in our memory for them. It is 
doubtful, however, whether it does. 

VI. Observe from concrete instances what difference con- 
ditions of rest and fatigue make in your memories; health 
and sickness; youth and age. 

VII. What subjects did you like best in school and col- 
lege? How many memories have you of these as compared 
with other subjects? 

Presentation Step. — I. Though one speaks of his mem- 
ory as if it were a faculty separate from mental content, 
there is really no such general faculty. You must see from 
your observation that what we have is memories rather 
than memory. 

II. Pick out the facts that you have remembered all 
your life, that have come back whenever you needed them, 
and analyze them to find the reason why you have remem- 
bered them so well : 

Let us say, a long time ago when you were away from 
home some one said to you, "Your house burned to the 
ground last ni-ght." You did not have to repeat that fact 



Memories 97 

ten times in order to remember it, or to have it written on 
the black-board or in your note-book. 

Notice the knowledge, the associations involved to make 
this fact, "your house burned to the ground last night." 
The thought of your home is a part of many complexes. 
You can hardly start out to think on any subject that you 
do not come upon some thought of the house^ the occupants, 
rooms, furniture, books, pictures, sounds, occupations, in- 
terests, pleasures, and sorrows connected with it. You 
know that "burned to the ground" means complete de- 
struction; that last night is a definite past time. All this 
wealth of material is brought into new relations, rear- 
ranged to make the reality, "My home was burned to the 
ground last night." 

Suppose, again, I could tell you, and it would be true, 
"You are the heir to a million dollars." I should not need 
to give you a text-book to explain the fact, or to keep you 
after school to be sure that you would remember it till 
examination time. 

Thoughts of denials, missed opportunities, what you 
would do for yourself and others if you had more money, — 
there is much material here, too, to make into the idea, 
"I am the heir to a million dollars." 

Both these thoughts would thus be inevitably in many 
trains of association; they would be interesting, because 
each involves a large amount of related material. 

That which is in many trains of association, interesting, 
made out of rich material is best remembered. The mem- 
ory for such facts is retentitive, and the facts are available 
when needed. 

III. So much for the nature of the mental material in- 
volved to secure retentive memories. 

A second matter of great importance in remembering 
facts is that of the relations between them. 
7 



98 Lessons in Psychology 

Science is classified knowledge, and it is with this kind 
that schools are concerned. 

"The best i)ossible sort of system into which to weave 
an object, mentally, is a rational system, or what is called 
a science. Place the thing in its pigeon-hole in a classifi- 
catory series ; explain it logically by its causes, and deduce 
from it its necessary ett'ects * * *. a science is thus 
the greatest of labor-saving contrivances. It relieves the 
memory of an immense number of details, replacing, as 
it does, merely contiguous associations by the logical ones 
of identity, similarity, or analogy." (James, "Talks to 
Teachers. ' ' ) 

But learning sciences in the right way is only another 
way of describing the process of mental growth. It is 
indeed literally true that "the only way to improve the 
memory is to nnprove the mind." 

Application Step.— I. What can one do to improve a 
poor memory ? 

Misled by the fallacy of formal training, many people 
begin to study systems designed to improve the memory. 
These systems are usually adaptations of Professor Edward 
Pick's work on memories. They are often helpful to the 
untrained as they suggest new and ingenious kinds of as- 
sociations, they classify material, and stimulate an inert 
mind to more vigorous effort. AVith the same amount of 
work, however, expended in the search for logical rela- 
tions, for scientific classification, the results would be, no 
doubt, more satisfactory. The mechanical parts of memory 
systems "may sometimes be crutches, but in the end we 
have to carry our crutches." 

II. As for helping one's self to remember the many 
small matters of daily tasks, one forgets here largely be- 
cause he is not willing to work hard enough to remember, 

-»^ >" .: 



Memories 99 

to go through the drudgery involved in always remem- 
bering. Though much sentimentality is wasted in vain 
wishes for a ' ' good memory, ' ' we are not enough in earnest 
to give the persistent, constant thought necessary to re- 
member to mail letters and to do trivial errands in the time 
of them, until perhaps some day we wake up quite helpless 
in these matters and almost beyond improvement. 

Mme. D., a well-known teacher of physical culture, is 
wont to tell her would-be patient of the indolent type, "I 
can do nothing for you, you have no mind ! ' ' What she 
means is that the luckless applicant has not sufficient will 
power, control, to work at her exercises daily, hourly, 
patiently, and persistently forever ! 

And in remembering the trivial requirements of daily 
life it is, in the same way, largely a matter of control, of 
"keeping up the loose end-s, " of the ingrained habit of a 
lifetime of doing the thing that ought to be done when it 
ought to be done, of being responsible. 

III. Suppose you forgot all the subjects that you studied 
in, for example, the high school ; suppose that literally all 
traces there made in the brain-cells and nerves were oblit- 
erated: Could you learn the same subjects more readily 
a second time! Under these conditions, surely not. 

Suppose, again, that only a few of the brain tendencies 
were obliterated — those established, let us say, by your 
study of arithmetic : Could you learn algebra again as 
easily as you did at first? Or with geography forgotten, 
could you learn history as easily? It seems to be true that 
one school subject is a help, a mental discipline for an- 
other in proportion as the two use the same brain paths, 
or as they have material in common. We literally "learn 
with all we have learned." 

But the matter of mental discipline involves more than 
learning as it is generally understood. We seem to be 
LOfC 



100 Lessons in Psychology 

limited in our ability to do to what we have done. Suppose 
for a third case, that a person forgot all his knowledge, all 
his mental content : how much ability to act would he have 
left f All the conceivable terms in which he does his think- 
ing, planning, and executing are gone, and if there is any 
such thing as "formal discipline" left to help him, it is 
too attenuated and intangible a matter to be understood. 

IV. Is it not truly appalling to think how much time is 
wasted in schools under this false notion that ability gained 
- in the mechanical study of no matter what subjects is still 
transferable when the content is forgotten! 

Perhaps this notion has arisen to justify formal, per- 
functory ways of teaching. Luckily there is no place left 
in modern pedagogical ideals for formal teaching of any 
kind. Teachers are beginning to realize that, in proportion 
as learning is formal, it is stultifying. The great millen- 
nium, however, when there will be a proper appreciation of 
all the wealth of human culture that should be taught in 
schools and taught to be remembered and used in daily 
life, every fact of it, still seems very far away. Yet ideals 
are surely present that involve not memory for the sake of 
memory, but mental growth by the acquisition at the ripe 
time of knowledge in right relations, real growth in 
wisdom. 

V. There is probably some one time in school life when 
each of the subjects usually taught in schools is most con- 
genial, interesting, and readily understood. If the given 
subject were taught then, its facts would be retained and 
available for later resource and power. As most subjects 
are now taught, however, that is, out of place and formally, 
pupils have for them only a mechanical memory, which is 
likely to be but fleeting and irresponsible. 

A whole science of teaching might be formulated (and 
much has been done) 1) from research in the contents of 



Memories 101 

children's minds and observation of their successive in- 
stinctive interests and tendencies as determining the time 
for specific teaching and training, and 2) from the estab- 
lishment of right relations between different subjects and 
parts of the same subject taught. 

VI. It is perhaps going too far to press the question, 
should anything be taught in schools that is not to be re- 
membered "? 

Yet the only consistent answer psychologically is, No. 
Herbert Spencer showed in his chapter on "What Knowl- 
edge is of Most Worth 'I ' ' the great value, necessity, even, in 
daily life, of the facts of many sciences, mathematics, and, 
in a measure, of history. An estimate of the wonderful 
value of the facts of history from a different standpoint is 
presented by the Herbartians. 

Contrasted with all this wealth of knowledge for pleas- 
ure, guidance, and inspiration, the barren results of the 
formal book training for examinations common to some 
schools seem barren indeed. 

It is often thought too much to require that one should 
be able to recall at any time for pleasure or use particular 
facts, "to pass an examination" on all one has learned in 
schools. Yet the daily requirements of life are our "ex- 
aminations," the opportunities that we improve or miss 
depending on the availability of our wisdom,— these are 
the tests of memory and consequent power. 



CHAPTER V 

Apperception 
Lesson I 

DEFINITION OF APPERCEPTION 

Preparation Step.— I. Look through a kaleidoscope. 
What is the explanation of the figures that you see"? 

The instrument is usually a hollow prism lined with re- 
flectors. Small pieces of glass are so confined at one end 
against a translucent disc as to move freely. The eye of 
the observer looks through the other end at these pieces 
of glass and their reflections. As the prism is turned or 
jarred slightly, with the constant rearrangement of per- 
haps only ten pieces of glass, figures of an almost infinite 
variety are formed. 

II. Still think of the stream of thought, consciousness, 
as made up of sensations all the same in kind, some of 
which form the outer order (the first, or primary members 
of trains of associations), the rest of which form the inner 
order (the other members of trains of associations). 

III. Think, also, of the sensations not as carried about 
in "memory," but as always a present result in mind of 
the stimulus of brain-cells, — the sensations primary when 
the stimulus is from the end organs, secondary when by 
the law of habit. 

IV. The stream of thought is an individual matter. Ask 
several persons to sketch quickly the front of the building 
in which you are. Compare the drawings: Why should 
they be so different ? 

Pronounce to several persons the words Empire State, 
2b, cobblestones. West Point : then ask each person what he 
thought when he heard each word. Why did not all think 



Apperception 103 

of the same thing, the 2b, for example, that was in your 
mind 1 

Each one, you answer, gave the associations established 
by his past experience. If two of these persons had had the 
same past experiences, could they then have made exactly 
similar drawings, or would they have had the same asso- 
ciations '? If they were brothers brought up always in the 
same family, would both think the same thought, have the 
same opinions? 

It does not take much reflection to show you that to have 
thoughts that are really alike two persons must be more 
nearly similar than even brothers. 

V. Let your imagination play for a moment on the prob- 
lem under what circumstances two persons could have ex- 
actly similar thoughts, the same associations: 

These persons must have had not only the same individ- 
ual past, but also the same heredity ; they must be the same 
as to their bodies, atom for atom and must have been always 
in the same place at the same time — but the conditions 
are getting beyond even imagination ! And there are per- 
haps other factors not physical and not now calculable, that 
would still contribute to the difference in response that any 
two people make to apparently the same stimulus. 

The present conditions, physical and mental, of each per- 
son are a resultant of his past, and the past for each in- 
dividual is necessarily different from that of all others. 
Therefore the stream of thought is for each person an in- 
dividual matter, and it is inconceivable that any two per- 
sons should have exactly similar associations and per- 
ceptions. 

Presentation Step.— I. But if each person's present is 
the resultant of his past you will ask, do we never have an 
experience that is wholly new? 



104 Lessons in Psychology 

Think of something that seemed a wholly new experience 
and analyze it. Think, for example, of the last new book 
you read : you say you gained new thoughts from the book — 
did mental states fly through the air from the page to your 
mind? Surely not! In what sense is it, then, that you 
gained new thoughts? 

Suppose you read the sentence, ' ' For several years there 
has been an unmistakable diminution of the public interest 
in oratorio." All these words were known to you before, 
but not in just these relations. As you perceived each word 
or group of words it was followed by trains of association, 
and the sentence had meaning to you depending on the 
nature of these associations and their present relations. 
All you gained from the book, then, was what you brought 
to it somewhat rearranged. 

Analysis of all so-called new experience will show that 
the content is invariably "old" or secondary, and that 
what is new is as invariably the arrangement. 

II. But, you will ask, is there not in. the beginning of life 
some wholly new experience? Suppose, in answer, that a 
person who has been totally blind to the age of twenty 
years suddenly receives his sight. He can see at first only 
what the structure of his eyes, optic nerve, and brain as 
determined by heredity and individual growth enables him 
to see. 

There is never a time, moreover, when it is thinkable 
that something comes from without to within the mind, 
when something the elements of which at least were not 
potentially in the mind before is introduced. 

And the colors and touches, even the primary ones that 
you make into the print of the book and the book itself; 
those, also, that the man formerly blind, or the little child 
makes into objects about him, instead of being something 
added to the mind from without it, — all are only those sen- 



Apperception 105 

sations that the past of each, individual and racial, enables 
him to make out of components potentially there. 

According to the theory of evolution an individual life 
cannot be isolated from parental and ancestral lives. As 
cell life in each organism develops, it is thinkable that 
constant readjustments of elemental mental conditions 
make possible in the course of time the stream of thought 
as we know it. 

III. Think of the action of the mind as somewhat like 
that of the kaleidoscope, with the sensations corresponding 
to the pieces of glass. As the kaleidoscope is turned, new 
designs are formed that are the rearrangements of the same 
pieces of glass. Somewhat thus with each new stimulus, 
sensations created anew, yet secondary, for each moment 
of the present, take new relations, and these newly ar- 
ranged groups make up the stream of thought at every 
moment. The mind, however, seems almost limitless in the 
number of its possible elements. Its possible combinations, 
also, seem infinite, and each new combination, beeause of 
memory, becomes a possibility, an added potentiality for 
future thought. The gain at each rearrangement, more- 
over, is not only in the complexity of material, the content, 
but also in the nature of the relations established. This 
last matter, however, is another story which you will study 
about from the standpoint of Thought. 

IV. When we look at the stream of thought under the 
aspect of the rearrangement of secondary mental material 
into higher forms of relation, the standpoint is that of 
Apperception. 

Application Step. — I. With the idea in mind that each 
one's stream of thought from moment to moment is the 
progressive rearrangement of his own secondary mental 
material, think over again the conditions that would make 



106 Lessons in Psychology 

it conceivable for two persons to have exactly similar asso- 
ciations. Is it not remarkable that we are as much alike, 
even, as we seem to be? 

Compare as to relative similarity your own thoughts and 
those of an Esquimo on the one hand, and, on the other, 
your own now with those that you had at ten years of age. 
Which two would be more nearly alike? Suggest other 
conditions for comparison. 

II. In the terms of apperception what is the process of 
reading? When you read the statement about oratorio, a 
rapid series of associations followed every perceived word 
or group of words so far as you understood what you read. 
Secondary thoughts were brought together of which you 
had never before been conscious in this relation. When 
the first member of the trains of association is a written 
or printed word, the process of rearranging secondary ma- 
terial is reading. 

III. Some one has said, "We do not judge a book, it 
judges us." What did he mean? 

IV. The interpretation of character from the standpoint 
of apperception is a favorite study with authors— see, for 
example, Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone," "The Schon- 
berg-Cotta Family," Kate Douglas Wiggin's "The Affair 
at the Inn," Robert Browning's "The Ring and the Book." 

In these books different persons relate the same series 
of events as each made them, thereby revealing each his 
own character. 

Lesson II 

LEARNING 

Preparation Step.— I. Take for analysis any random 
facts that you have learned to-day, such as 1) that it is 
possible to travel nearly all the way from Portland, Maine, 



Apperception 107 

to Lincoln, Nebraska by trolley; 2) that there is a cemetery 
for clogs at Stratf ord-on-Avon ; 3 ) that the Post Office De- 
partment of the United States does not pay, is not self- 
supporting; 4) that a child of three by his heroism in res- 
cuing his baby sister from a burning house is a candidate 
for the Carnegie medal; 5) that the temperature this 
morning was 14 degrees below zero; 6) that you have a 
letter; and so on. 

Since all mental action is apperceptive, these facts must 
have been made out of secondary material. 

What did it take to make into each fact? Suppose one 
had never heard of Portland, or a trolley car — the first 
statement would not mean much. On the other hand, if 
you knew at least vaguely the direction and location of 
these cities, the distance by steam cars in hours between 
them, and in general, the route followed by trolley from 
place to place ; if you knew what it means to ride through 
the country by trolley ; if you knew perhaps that between 
two cities on the route in New York State there is no trol- 
ley line, if, I say, you had all this secondary material, you 
would have enough then to learn with ordinary intelligence 
the fact that you can travel nearly all the way from Port- 
land to Lincoln by trolley. 

Again, you knew what the condition is in a business that 
does not earn so much as it expends; you thought of the 
Post Office Department of the United States in the terms 
of visual images of the local Post Office, the postman, mail 
trains, and of thought words about collecting, transport- 
ing, and distributing the mail from city and country, and 
the complexity and cost of all this labor. Putting all these 
ideas together in new relations you learned that "the Post 
Office Department of the United States does not pay.'" 

II. Hunt out the secondary material that it takes to 
learn many other facts that you have learned recently. 



108 Lessons in Psychology 

Presentation Step. — When we are looking at the 
process of rearranging secondary material in the stream 
of thought under the aspect of acquiring "new" ideas, 
the standpoint is that of Learning. 

Application Step.— I. From how much of our experience 
do we learn ? Rearrangements are taking place every mo- 
ment, and the tirst member of every train of association 
involves the bringing together of material that has never 
been together before. Clearly in spite of ourselves we 
must be learning all the time. Now you can sympathize 
with M. Jourdain's surprise when he found that he had 
been speaking prose all his life! 

IL But though we are learning all the time, not all that 
we learn is of equal value. The ordinary haphazard ac- 
quisition of children outside of school is not usually esti- 
mated as very precious. In the case of school learning, 
however, the teachers' aim should be to cause pupils so to 
learn that the result will be systematized knowledge, 
science, available for daily use and pleasure,— knowledge, 
moreover, that as efifective motives to lofty achievement in 
ecuiduct vitalizes character, that stimulates to research for 
further knowledge, not only for self-realization, but also 
to add to the general sum of human achievement. 

III. Suppose that the little chap who saved his sister's 
life was a member of your own family; that you were ac- 
tually concerned in the administration of postal matters; 
that you were expecting a letter of great interest to you; 
that you had been over the route from Portland to Lincoln 
by steam cars, also from Lincoln to some eastern city per- 
haps by trolley. AVould it make any difference in your 
learning of the facts"? Would you comprehend them more 
intelligently than you do now"? AVhat difference would 



Apperception 109 

these considerations make in your interest, in the number 
of associations, and consequent memory and availability 
of the facts"? What, in the degree to which they are 
understood ? 

What difference in short, does the nature and amount of 
the secondary material rearranged in the process of learn- 
ing make? 

It makes all the difference in the world. In the degree 
that learning is formal, perfunctory, a matter of words 
and symbols, not involving a rich and full mental content 
is it deadening. On the other hand, to make the applica- 
tion to school learning, only as the act involves the greatest 
wealth of mental content, that is, the interests and dynamic 
factors instinctive to the dift'erent periods of a child's 
growth as he recapitulates race advancement, is it spontan- 
eous and consequently educative. 

IV. The systematic and scientific study of children has 
sHfted emphasis from the problem of teaching to that of 
learning. 

To find the contents of learners' minds, that is, their 
native interests, tendencies, and reactions has thus become 
the vital consideration for teachers. This matter disre- 
garded, even though a teacher may be learned in his "sub- 
ject matter," his work is weak in proportion; this matter 
determined, he has an intelligent guide to what, when, and 
how to teach. 

"Knowledge of the subject-matter and a sense of 
humor" doubtless go a long way toward making a good 
teacher. Much good work has been done, moreover, em- 
pirically and through sympathy, but how much better work 
might teachers do, if at the same time that they have knowl- 
edge, a sense of humor, and warm sympathy, they could 
teach intelligently and scientifically ! 



110 Lessons in Psychology 

The following vigorous protest against over-teaching 
makes one think seriously : 

"Is pedagogy an art with a science at its foundation, or 
is it only a species of opportunism which should merely 
stand by and occasionally smooth out a difficulty, humbly 
conscious of the fact that all the motive force must come 
from the learner"? In other words, can the teacher think 
for the pupil, or must the pupil do his own thinking"? Is 
not the conventional relation of pupil and teacher a pal- 
pably artificial one, an irksome ligament which wears fear- 
fully on both? Why, if this is not true, do so many chil- 
dren who love to learn hate school? and why are most 
teachers, especially most women teachers, sick, crabbed, 
and cynical? Has the modern method of substituting a 
ghastl}^ imitation of play for work, and of feeding the pupil 
predigested knowledge, helped matters much ? Why, then, 
did a rebellious kindergarten pupil recently announce that . 
she wanted to get into the first grade at once, because she 
was so tired of having to play all the time, and wanted to 
learn something? Why should children learn to count, 
read, and Avrite before they can understand the necessity 
and object of such processes, and years before they have 
any practical use for them? Is not building bridges the 
only way of learning how to build bridges, and is not deal- 
ing with people the only way of learning how to influence 
people? Why should a man who knows how to do things 
himself waste his time telling other people how to do them, 
especially as it is futile to tell another person how to do 
things'? How much influence would Napoleon have wielded 
if he had been a professor of military tactics instead of a 
practical strategist? Finally, would it not be better for 
the world if there were less teaching and more learning?" 

(R. T. House.) 



Apperception 111 

Lesson III 

TEACHING 

Preparation Step.— I. Many aims have been posited in 
education. Perhaps the most satisfactory one as a guide 
and test of the daily work in the schoolroom is that of 
character. 

II. Try to realize anew the conception of your stream of 
thought as in some way a unit which has two aspects, now 
the outer, and again the inner, the two the same in kind. 
Think of the ever shifting present of consciousness as the 
rearrangement of secondary sensuous elements in time, 
space, and higher relations into ever more adequate gen- 
eralizations and abstractions. 

III.- 1 wish you to learn a certain fact that can be made 
out of the following secondary material : 

How many times a day do you wash your hands ? You 
answer, "I wash them many times." What do you use in 
washing them? "I use water and soap, hand-sapolio 
sometimes."' 

Once at the seashore I saw a lady dust her silk ruffles 
with handfuls of the clean dry sand on which she wa-^ 
sitting. 

Imagine that some one asks you to examine a dainty 
book, delicately colored. Your first thought is perhaps, 
"I must not soil it." You thereby show that you care for 
the quality of the book, have deference, respect to its 
beauty. 

We have come to show respect in many cases in a figur- 
ative way, by symbols alone : One raises his hat to an ac- 
quaintance, bows to those he knows, rises to greet an older 
person, waits to allow him to pass first, kneels in prayer. 
What other symbolism do you use constantly? 



112 Lessons in Psychology 

Think how you would feel without any work — suppose 
you never had done anything toward a purpose. We have 
a proverb which says, "Satan always finds some work for 
idle hands to do," that is, our work keeps us out of mis- 
chief. The report of a certain prison in Pennsylvania 
states that eighty-three and one-half per cent of its inmates 
have no trades, were idlers. 

But the good results of work are not merely negative, 
they are indeed positive in usefulness, virtue, and happiness. 

Imagine as you look out that instead of trolley cars, 
buildings, and trees you saw a rolling waste of sand and 
sparse vegetation stretching away to the horizon in every 
direction, with not a drop of water for miles and miles, 
hours and hours. There is never any rain, the sun shines 
all the long day with an intense heat, and it is always 
summer. Imagine it vividly, as though you were actually 
walking along in the desert. 

Point in the direction of Arabia. If you really went in 
the direction you are pointing, you would come to a star, 
would you not! "Come down to the earth" and remem- 
ber that you must consider the shape of the earth, its cur- 
vature, in pointing to Arabia. 

Picture, also, instead of the smartly-dressed Americans 
whom you see in the street, such a group of^warthy Arabs 
winding their way across the desert that you have made, — 
such a group as you have seen in Schreyer's pictures, per- 
haps. Imagine them as of middle stature and powerful 
make, dressed in loosely draped white or colored garments, 
with their heads protected from the sun by large turbans. 

' ' The Arabs express in their features dignity and pride. 
They are naturally active, intelligent, and courteous, with 
a character marked by temperance, bravery, and hospital- 
ity, along with a strong propensity for poetry." 



Apperception 113 

These people of the desert are, according to their lights, 
devout, good people. As to religion, they are worshipers 
of God whose prophet they believe to be Mohammed. A 
Mohammedan, you remember, has fixed hours for prayer, 
and, no matter where he is, at those times he turns his face 
toward the Holy City and prays. 

The other day just at dusk, as I was walking along the 
almost deserted street, I suddenly became conscious that 
there was some one coming on the pavement just back of 
me. I glanced around and what was my amazement to 
see a camel ! Then I remembered that Ben Hur was in 
town and decided that the cainel and his attendant must 
be bound for the theatre a little way farther on. But for 
the moment it was inexpressibly strange to see a camel 
stalking along the city street — it quite transported me to 
another and very different scene— the long line of a cara- 
van crawling over the desert. 

Now the fact that I wanted to teach you is this one : 

"The Arabs far from water wash their hands in the 
sands of the desert before prayer. So the dust of labor 
purifies us." (Auerbach.) 

Presentation Step. — I. In learning this fact, you have 
brought together several groups of secondary material that 
had not been together before. In considering what teach- 
ing is, the standpoint is changed. How did you come to 
make these rearrangements 1 You made them because 
something or someone stimulated them : 

Teaching is the process of stinuilating rearrangements 
of secondary material in some one's mind. 

II. If we learn from all our experience, haphazard and 
chance as well as directed, then every moment we must be 
taught. In school teaching, however, there is a definite aim : 
8 



114 Lessons in Psychology 

School teaching is a process of stimulating in a pupil's 
mind the rearrangement of secondary material into syste- 
matized, scientitic knowledge available for guidance and 
effective in enriching and energizing character. 

Application Step.— I. Of late "methods" of teaching 
have come somewhat into disrepute. This is as it should 
be in so far as they were formal or "cut and dried." A 
recent critic is indeed quite right to inveigh against labored, 
artificial "method" as suggesting the work of "the mediae- 
val barber's apprentice, who could set up for himself only 
when lie could whip two ounces of soap into barrels of 
lather." 

In so far, however, as the mind acts in certain definite 
ways, should not these ways be observed and taken as 
guides in this most important of all occupations, teaching? 
The fact, moreover, that "method" has been abused, that 
it has subordinated content and substance to form and 
made learning about as empty as it was when the teacher 
merely heard pupils recite text-books is no reason for in- 
veighing against all method. 

II. It is urged, also, that teachers do not know psychol- 
ogy, therefore it cannot be of use to them. But the fact 
that one does not know psychology is no reason why one 
should not study it. Psychology is not a more difficult 
subject to learn than many others if one is only willing to 
work patiently at jt in the detailed way, for example, that 
one works at mathematics or the study of birds. 

III. Though there are certain qualities in every good 
teacher that were born with him, much may still be done 
toward "making" him. 

It is an advantage indeed to be well born as to health, 
emotional capacity, and will potential, yet most young 
people of average endowment in these respects can be made 



Apperception 115 

into fairly intelligent and enthusiastic teachers. Knowl- 
edge of subject matter alone, however, will not do it, nor, 
of course, will knowledge of psychology alone. 

You may have known, say, an excellent and enthusiastic 
teacher of science who had attained his high success with- 
out professional training. Yet was his enthusiasm for the 
process of teaching, for the science he was imparting, or 
for young people? The chances are that it was not for 
the first. If in addition then to the mastery of his science 
he could have had a mastery of the "reasons why" in teach- 
ing, might not his success have been higher still? 

IV. You have thought about the difference in response 
by different people to the given stimulus. How individual 
a matter must learning in schools then be ! Most teaching 
is addressed to the "average" pupil. The really defective 
type has little chance in ordinary schools and is usually 
provided for in a special school ; the slow working type is 
perhaps best helped by a plan like that originated at Ba- 
tavia, thus those who are clever above the average are 
doubtless the ones who suffer most from teaching in general. 

V. No doubt classes are too large, particularly in pri- 
mary and intermediate grades, in most city schools. Yet 
in spite of the fact of the difference in response to the same 
stimulus, I have seen really close individual work done 
throughout primary and intermediate grades, no one of 
which numbered less than thirty pupils, such work made 
possible by the choice of a rich content of myth and his- 
tory with all their suggestions for other content and form 
subjects suited to the children's ages. Teachers here with 
a "keen scent for pairts in laddies" had abundant chance 
to discover individual aptitudes, and the pupils did not 
come out of those grades "all just alike." 

VI. Can any lesson, any subject be taught at any time? 
Since the contents of a pupil 's mind determine finally what 



116 Lessons in Psychology 

he can learn and since this material differs with each year 
of life as instincts and race tendencies appear and ripen, 
not all subjects or lessons are of equal interest or can be 
learned at all times. 

VII. Since all there is to character in young children is 
instincts, education ought to be the process of making 
instinctive reactions into conscious ones and of correlating 
spontaneous acts into the reasoned ones of later character. 

A suggestion as to how the school programme can ac- 
complish this result (a suggestion happily followed by an 
increasing number of schools in this country), comes from 
the study of the contents of children's minds and charac- 
teristic modes of thought and action, a study Mdiich shows 
that the instincts ripening at different periods in a child's 
life cause him to feel an essential sympathy with the life 
and conditions of the corresponding • race period. In a 
sense, the child remembers his racial past in the order in 
which it was lived. How better, then, can complete ad- 
vantage be taken of the child's native impulses than by 
guiding him to liye with vigor and truth freely through the 
best in successive periods of race development? For "In 
order that the heroic impulses of boyhood may neither dis- 
appear without serving a purpose nor degenerate, but 
rather lead on to the period of reason, they need an ideal 
presentation of such men as achieve what the boy would 
like to achieve, and who at the same time reveal the more 
suitably the transition to a higher order. ' ' 

Lesson IV 

THE LESSON UNIT 

Preparation Step.— I. Through custom and convenience 
our schools are fixed in the habit of devoting from thirty 
to sixtv minutes of the day during each term oi- year to 



Apperception 117 

each of the several subjects taught. The lesson is usually 
made up of one fact or a number that are related so as 
to form one whole. 

II. One might ask in connection with the teaching of the 
fact about the Arabs, why not just tell it? What is to be 
gained by "lashing up so much lather?" Couldn't one 
learn, remember, and use the fact just as well without all 
that preparation? The answer of psychology to all three 
is, No. 

If teaching is the process of stimulating the rearrange- 
ment of secondary material, then there is a distinct gain, 
and several gains, in calling up the secondary material 
before it is brought into new relations. Some of these 
gains are : 

a) It takes time to learn, that is, to recall all the sec- 
ondary material that one may have potentially at com- 
mand. A preparation step gives time. 

b) The Preparation Step brings a larger amount of 
secondary material to mind than could return if the new 
thought were given or read without preparation. 

c) The Preparation Step, since it stimulates a greater 
amount of secondary material than would be in mind 
without it, makes possible a clearer understanding of the 
new fact. We "understand with all we know." 

d) Since the Preparation Step brings up a large amount 
of secondary material to make into the new fact, it, the 
fact, will thus be in a larger number of trains of associa- 
tion and therefore more readily available. This means 
that the memory for it will be better. 

e) The Preparation Step gives the teacher a chance to 
stimulate interesting and rich material, to take advantage 
of instincts and dynamic factors that make learning 
pleasurable. And only as learning is spontaneous is 
it educative. 



118 Lessons in Psychology 

f ) We are said to be only relatively awake any of the 
time, so that it is of advantage to be able to start a recita- 
tion with material that will wake pupils up to a lively 
interest. They have perhaps just come from play or from 
another recitation, and they cannot spring at once into 
the thought of this one without help. 

g) The Presentation Step, moreover, in its logical ar- 
rangement may begin in a relatively uninteresting place. 

III. It is hard, perhaps, to realize from just one illus- 
tration that one does learn a fact more intelligently be- 
cause of the preparation, the consideration of the secondary 
matter to be made into it — and yet when one considers the 
whole school life, the gain day by day of having a real con- 
tent, what is intrinsically interesting stimulated into right 
relations, something of the value of preparation in the long 
run is seen. 

Presentation Step.— Psychology suggests the divi- 
sion of each day's lesson, the lesson whole, or Lesson Unit 
into ^^ the Preparation Step, the purpose of which is to 
call up secondary material and give the chance to meditate 
upon it, and '-^^ the Presentation Step, where the secondary 
material is brought into new relations. (A third step of 
the lesson-unit, the Application Step, will be considered 
in the chapter on Thought.) 

Application Step.— I. If you chance to be a teacher, 
analyze every day's lessons into a lesson-unit. Accustom 
yourself to make this analysis till you do so simply and 
naturally, almost instinctively, the moment you think of 
material to be taught. Try to arrange the material of nar- 
rations, letters, anecdotes, lectures after the same plan. 

II. If it has been your custom merely to hear pupils re- 
cite what they have committed of the assignment of the 



Apperception 119 

previous day, ''Learn five pages more of your text-book," 
if this plan has been your custom, then try one somewhat 
like the following: 

Notice what "the next five pages of the text-book" con- 
tain ; give the preparation step for that material before 
assigning the lesson, and let the work at home on the "five 
pages" be a part of the Presentation Step. The repetition 
and added generalizations in class the next day can com- 
plete the Presentation Step. The Application Step may 
follow, partly in class and partly as assigned work to be 
done at home the next night. 

III. It is hoped that the following suggestions on the two 
steps considered will be found helpful : 

A. On the Preparation Step : 

1. The preparation step (I hesitate to write it with 
capitals — it seems to make so formal a thing of it) is 
designed not as an introduction, a preface, a foreword to 
lead up to the new idea, — its aim is rather a very different 
one, that is, to call up all the secondary material that is 
to be made into the new idea. 

2. State the aim of the lesson to the class. (This state- 
ment must not tell too much [the whole lesson], nor yet 
too little.) 

3. Consider the beginning place. ( Call up first the most 
interesting, rich, and striking concrete, even homely, sec- 
ondary material.) 

4. Make directions definite and concrete. 

5. Do not confuse Presentation (new) material with 
Preparation (old, or secondary) material. 

6. Prepare, in general, for all of the Presentation Step 
in the Preparation Step. ^That is, call up all the sec- 
ondary material needed to make the new ideas.) 



120 Lessons in Psychology 

7. All of the material in the Preparation Step is in gen- 
eral "old," or secondary. Sometimes, however, new mate- 
rial that does not belong to the Presentation Step, yet is 
necessary to an understanding of it, must be given here. 

8. Do not call up more material in the Preparation Step 
than you need to use in the Presentation, and do not call 
up irrelevant material. 

9. The form of the Presentation Step may be free ques- 
tion and answer, an informal, spontaneous conversation to 
bring vividly to mind the secondary material needed and 
to stimulate the imagination. The order of procedure 
should be psychological rather than logical. (Often the 
teacher may do most of the talking, for it does not follow 
that because pupils are not talking, they are not thinking 
to the best possible advantage.) 

10. Often the best material for preparation is concrete 
material recalled from experience at home, at play, in 
every-day life wholly outside of school. 

11. The material brought to mind in the Preparation 
Step should be as near to instinctive interests as possible. 

12. It is often a help to pupils to have the teacher sum 
up at the close in outline the secondary material involved. 

B. On the Presentation Step : 

1. Arrange the new material in a short series of clear, 
numbered steps. (The teacher must have determined with 
perfect definiteness upon the material for the Presentation 
Step before either the Preparation or the Application 
Step can be planned.) 

2. Consider ^) the completeness, ^^ the unity, *^' the pro- 
portion, and ^^ the progressive order of the Presentation 
Step. 

3. Fix the material by a sufficient number of repetitions. 
(The purpose of the Application Step is sometimes mis- 



Apperception 121 

taken to be repetition. All of the mere repetition of the 
new material may well come in the Presentation Step.) 

4. xVll of the matter of the Presentation Step is, in gen- 
eral, new. 

IV. The objection may be made that there would not 
be time in the school courses as they are now to teach by 
lesson-units. 

In answer, it may seem more expeditious to teach chil- 
dren to say the words. In proportion, however, as the 
words are merely formal, involve only the tongue muscles, 
they are deadening and not educative. On the other hand, 
in proportion to the wealth of secondary material, past 
experience involved, learning is worth while. ''Festina 
leiite * * * should be printed in letters of gold over 
the doorposts of every school room, but whether or not 
teachers regard the motto, nature takes care that her best 
advice is attended to without the formality of a sign- 
board." No matter how much a teacher may flatter her- 
self that, because the little tongues can recite the words 
glibly, the children have learned, nature sees to it that the 
poor children have to pay for the violation of her laws. It 
takes time to learn and even though our formal devices 
may seem to be short-cuts to knowledge, they are in reality 
nothing of the sort. Here as elsewhere "the longest way 
round is often the shortest way home." 

V. There is danger here, as in the "method" inveighed 
against by critics, that a teacher will become mechanical 
and sacrifice all considerations to the form of the Lesson- 
Unit. The danger is lessened, however, in proportion as 
one keeps near to his psychology which gives the true rea- 
son for each step. 

Some one has called psychology the teacher's "Black- 
stone." (Yet imagine a lawyer who goes back to his Black- 
stone as seldom as most teachers go to their psychology.) 



122 Lessons in Psychology 

It is more than that— it is his very life. Only as he keeps 
near it, is his enthusiasm glowing and his work intelligent. 
In proportion as he is ignorant of it, lacks a working idea 
of it, or fails to use it as a basis for all thought and pro- 
cedure is his work the weaker. 

To be sure, sheer human sympathy and tact may make a 
good teacher and may seem a substitute to a degree for ex- 
plicit science, but human sympathy and tact are only true 
psychology empirically applied. 

VI. A master of his subject, inspired and vitalized by 
a knowledge of the psychology of teaching, will come to 
teach with ease and to impart not a text-book, but large 
truths in a large way. His work, in time, will conceal the 
"bones," the "skeleton" of any studied form— it will be- 
come a matter, not of the letter, but of the spirit. One 
thus able and energized will guide pupils naturally and 
intelligently and will attain that high ideal of teaching, 
the stimulation of the learner to spontaneous self-activity, 
independent thought, and effective actualization of lofty 
ideals of character— teaching that will "extend the pupil's 
knowledge of things worth while, broaden and deepen his 
sympathies, and force him to feel and be and live his 
better self." 

Lesson V 

TRAINING THE "POWERS OF OBSERVATION" 

Preparation Step. — I. A musician is able to pick out 
a dissonant voice in a large group of singers. In an orches- 
tra he can attend to the quality and pitch of each separate 
instrument. He is not likely to be equally observing of 
plant life, of conditions of health and disease, or of 
bridges. 

The moment a bank clerk touches a counterfeit paper 
or coin he knows that it is spurious. The blind also are 



Apperception 123 

very observing in the terms of touch, and their sense of 
smell is developed with wonderful acuteness. 

An artist is sensitive to colors. Most women are more 
observing of colors than most men. 

II. Imagine a group of persons on the day-boat passing 
West Point. They are, say, an engineer, a historian, a young 
girl, a West Pointer, a farmer : What will each one observe ? 

III. In what lines are you observing'? In what, not? 

IV. How often, when we have our attention called to a 
certain thing, we see repeated instances of it though we 
had never before noticed any ! We have become observing 
of the matter. 

Presentation Step. — I. In our "powers of observation" 
we are limited to what our past experience makes it possi- 
ble for us to observe. To all else we are literally blind, 
deaf, callous. The musician has potentially an indefinitely 
complex arid rich mental content of highly discriminated, 
emotionally colored, and scientifically classified knowledge 
of sounds. The artist has the same sort of knowledge of 
colors. And in the same way the peculiar training of the 
bank clerk has brought about a mental content that makes 
him observing in his own particular interests to a degree 
inconceivable to the ordinary man. 

AA^e observe with all we have observed. 

II. It follows then that no one kind of knowledge makes 
a person observing in all directions. 

The Indian, the type instance of acute sensitiveness to 
surroundings, though he is vastly learned in forest lore and 
wise in the interpretation of all of nature's signs, should 
he look with his marvel ously trained eyes into a micro- 
scope could see little. His eyes are acute to see only what 
his thoughts enable him to see. Pie is observing only in 
a few limited directions. 



124 Lessons in Psychology 

Should a blind man receive his sight, though no longer 
blind he is still unable to see. Pie has not correlations of 
colors to lit the new circumstances and his complex cor- 
relations in touch, muscular sense, and smell are not trans- 
ferable to sight. 

No formal training of the "powers of observation" is 
possible. 

Application Step. — I. "He that would bring home the 
wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the 
Indies. ' ' 

' ' The only things that we commonly see are those which 
we preperceive. " (W. James, "Psychology.") 

"The difference" (in observation) "lies in the mind, not 
in the brute fact." (John Adams, "Herbartian Psy- 
chology.") 

II. Sherlock Holmes criticizes a colleague: "He pos- 
sesses two out of three qualities necessary for the ideal de- 
tective. He has the power of observation and that of de- 
duction. He is only wanting in knowledge * * *" but 
that lack is fatal. The knowledge of Sherlock Holmes, on 
the other hand, is wide. He is observing in very many 
directions. 

III. In what ways can training in school help children 
to observe! What suggestions can psychology give to 
teachers here? 

"To cultivate observation, then, is not to train the eye, 
the ear, the hand to extreme sensitiveness, but rather to 
work up well-organized knowledge within the mind itself. 
If we desire minute observation in a definite direction, we 
must cultivate special knowledge to correspond. If we wish 
to encourage general observation, we can only succeed by 
eultivatinff wide interests." ("Herbartian Psychology Ap- 
plied to Education," John Adams.) 



CHAPTER VI 

THOUGHT 

Lesson I 

THE SYLLOGISM 

Preparation Step.— I. What is the object you have in 
your hand? 

It is a book, you say. (Notice the train of associations 
here and the correlations.) 

II. How do you know that this object is a book? 
Because it has printed leaves bound together. 

The reason that you have given is much condensed. Ex- 
pand it into all that you imply. 

All books, you say, have printed leaves bound together; 
this object has printed leaves bound together, therefore, 
it is a book. (Yon have not said just what you meant, but 
for the moment, let it pass.) 

III. Think in a similar way how you know other objects. 
And how do you know that this is to-day? That a certain 
color is blue? 

In answer to the last you say, all blues are the result 
of a certain affection of my eye and optic nerve ; this color 
is the result of such an affection, therefore it is blue. 

Presentation Step.— I. The group of sentences that you 
gave in answer to the last question we shall call a syllogism. 

II. How many sentences are there in this syllogism? 
There are three. 

What is a sentence? It is the expression of a thought 
in words. 

What are the parts of a sentence? They are the subject 
and the predicate. 



126 Lessons in Psychology 

What is the predicate of the last sentence in the syllo- 
gism ? " ( is ) blue ' ' is the predicate. 

Notice that it, the term "blue" occurs once again as 
the subject of the first sentence. Write x over it in each 
place. 

What is the predicate of the first sentence '1 It is " result 
of a certain affection." 

How many times does this term occur in the syllogism? 
It occurs twice. 

Write y over it in each case. 

In all, how many different terms are there in the syllo- 
gism "? There are three. 

A'Vrite z over the remaining third term. 

How many times does each occur? 

Writing out the letters instead of the terms we have; 

X y 

z y 

Z X 

All thought can in general be reduced to the form of 
the syllogism made up of three sentences and of three 
terms. This statement does not mean that we think con- 
sciously in syllogistic figures, but only that this movement 
is the natural one in apperception. 

III. In logic (the science of the forms of thought) the 
sentences of the syllogism are called propositions. 

In making the proposition "all snow is frozen water," 
I have a train of associations. The two terms of the 
proposition are associated or related not only by contiguity, 
but also by a correlation, that of identity. I assert identity 
between the two terms. 

Looked at from the standpoint of thought, the mental 
assertion of the degree of relationship arrived at in the 
process of thought between two terms is a Judgment. The 
expression of a judgment in words is a Proposition. 



Thought 127 

IV. How is it possible to express the degree of relation 
between the two terms of the third proposition in each of 
the syllogisms in the Preparation Step i 

I can say that this object is a book because I have com- 
pared both "this object" and "book" with the same idea, 
"has printed leaves bound together," and I have found 
the relation to be , such in each case that I can say, this 
object is a book. 

The mental assertion of the relation between two terms 
depending on their relatiou to a common third term is a 
Syllogism. The expression of the reasoning is also called 
a Syllogism. 

The process of Thought is that of seeing relationships. 

V. A little way back it was noticed that you had not 
said just what you meant. The syllogism given was : 

1. All books have printed leaves bound together; 

2. This object has printed leaves bound together, 

3. Therefore, this object is a book. 

Suppose we represent these three terms and their rela- 
tions graphically: Let us picture "all books" as enclosed 
in a small circle, "somewhat as sheep might be in a 
pinfold, this circle containing all the 'books' and nothing 
else." Let a greater circle contain the class of "objects 
with printed leaves bound together. ' ' Now the first propo- 
sition says that "all books" belong to the class of "objects 
with printed leaves bound together." The picture of that 
proposition would then be : 




No books could get outside the larger circle because all 
have printed leaves bound together. 



128 Lessons in Psychology 

The second proposition says, "This object has printed 
leaves bound together." Represent "this object" by a 
third circle and show its relation to "objects that have 
printed leaves bound together." Clearly it can go any- 
where within the large circle. Suppose we put it in like 
this: 




Does it follow that "this object" must come within the 
circle "all books?" Evidently not. It may or it may not. 
There is no reason why it should— all that the second propo- 
sition says is that "this object" must belong to "objects 
that have printed leaves." Then, you see, it does not 
follow that "this object" is a book, — we are not "driven 
to the conclusion" from the reasoning, therefore the syllo- 
gism is not a valid one. 

VI. Is not what you really meant to say this syllogism? 

y X 

1. All object made of printed leaves bound together are, 
books ; 

z y 

2. This object is made of printed leaves bound together, 

Z X 

3. Therefore, this object is a book. 

X y y X 

Now instead of z y we have z y Testing this syllo- 

Z X Z X 

gism by the circles we have, 

1. All y's are x's 

2. All z's are y's 

3. Therefore, all z's are x's. 




Thought 129 

Since all z's are y's, they surely must be x's, for all 
y's are x's. This syllogism, then, is valid. 

The second syllogism in the preparation step to be valid 
must then be : 

1. The result in my mind of a certain affection of my 
eye and optic nerve is blue; 

2. This color is the result of such an affection ; 

3. Therefore it is blue. 

Application Step.— I. I dwell upon this fallacy (or in- 
valid course of reasoning) because it is so conunon. As I 
was writing this lesson I noticed the following advertise- 
ment of an insurance company : 

"Savages do not insure their lives; 

Morose and cranky people do not, — 

Wife and children haters do not,— 

Misers do not — 

Persons whose sense of personal responsibility is feebly 
developed, do not— 

People who are hanged, seldom or never leave life in- 
surance. 

Victims of swelled heads, do not — 

The meanest man you know, safe to say, has no life in- 
surance, and does not want it." 

The implication is that if we do not insure, we shall be 
classed with these people. But we need not come under 
any of the classes according to the reasoning. If the ad- 
vertisement read, "Those who do not insure their lives 
are savages," then it would follow, that one who did not 
insure his life was' a savage. 

The study of logic helps one to be critical of his lan- 
guage, to say what he means. 

II. There is a theory that all thought is condensed 
syllogisms. It is difficult to determine this fact from 
9 



130 Lessons in Psychology 

watching one's self, so difficult that many writers doubt 
whether we do think in this way. 

III. From the observation of children it is evident that 
their reasoning is syllogistic, but it is also evident that their 
experience is so limited that they seem from the standpoint 
of the mental content of adult minds to "jump at conclu- 
sions." They judge from premises which to adults are 
insufficient. (Read "The Psychology of Reasoning," Th. 
Ribot, and other books on Thought.) 

IV. Notice the predicate, "blue" of the third proposi- 
tion : because it is a wider, or greater, or major term than 
the subject it is called the major term. The subject is the 
minor term. The term with which these two are compared 
is the medium, the common measure, the middle term. It, 
of course, does not occur in the third proposition. 

This third proposition is a jconclusion drawn from the 
comparison of the major and minor terms with the middle 
term. It is always spoken of as the conclusion. The propo- 
sition in which the major term occurs is the major premise, 
that in which the minor term occurs is the minor premise. 
In a strictly correct syllogism, the major premise stands 
before the minor, but in ordinary wanting and speaking 
this rule is seldom observed. Correct reasoning, however, 
may always be reduced to the correct syllogistic form'. 

V. Expand where it is necessary and rearrange the fol- 
lowing arguments, then show what is wrong with them : 

His imbecility of character might have been inferred 
from his proneness to favorites; for all weak princes have 
this failing. (De Morgan.) 

Every one desires virtue, because every one desires 
happiness. 

VI. The syllogism by which we learn is apparently an 
invalid one. For example, I have (1) a group of grays and 



Thought 131 

drabs, (2) Thought words, grays and drabs, (3) Whistler's 
portrait of Carlyle. This train of associations expanded is: 

This portrait is painted in grays and drabs ; 

But Whistler's Carlyle is painted in grays and drabs. 

Therefore this portrait must be Whistler's Carlyle. 

Then I confirm my conclusion point by point by valid 
syllogisms. 

Lesson II 
valid syllogisms 
Preparation Step.— 

m. 1. All horseback riders should keep to the bridle-path ; 

2. Those children are horseback riders; 

3. Therefore, they should keep to the bridle-path. 

n. 1. All stars are self-luminous; 

2. No planets are self-luminous; 

3. Therefore, no planets are stars. 

o. 1. Mercury is not solid; 

2. Mercury is a metal, 

3. Therefore, some metals are not solid. 

p. 1. No Americans are Europeans; 

2. Some Europeans are progressive people; 

3. Therefore, there are progressive people who are 

not Americans. 

Presentation Step.— I. A glance shows you that in 
form not any two of these syllogisms are alike. For con- 
venience in studying them, letter the terms with x, y, and z. 
Always mark the predicate of the conclusion, the major 
term, x, the minor term z. The term which is left, the 



132 Lessons in rsYciioLOGv 

middle term, mark y. The lettering of these four syllo- 



gisms is: 












1 


2 


3 


4 




yx 


xy 


yx 


xy 




zy 


zy 


yz 


yz 




zx 


zx 


zx 


zx 



These four are the only combinations of subject and 
predicate that can be made with the three terms in the 
syllogism when the conclusion is zx. They are called the 
four figures of the syllogism. 

II. Notice that not all the propositions are like N. 1. 
Contrast N. 1 with O. 3, as to the distribution of their 
subjects: ■ 

N. 1. All stars are self-luminous. 

0. 3, Some metals are not solid. 

In N. 1, the proposition affirms the predicate to belong 
to the whole of the subject. That sort of proposition is 
called a universal proposition. In contrast to N. 2, it is 
affirmative. For convenience in speaking of it in logic it 
is represented by A. Examples of A are M. 1, 2, and 3 ; 
N. 1 ; 0. 2. 

N. 2, no planets are self-luminous. This proposition, 
also, is universal but negative. It is represented by E. 

In contrast to the universal affirmative A, is the propo- 
sition, Some Europeans are progressive people, a particular 
affirmative, represented by I. 

The particular negative proposition, Some progressive 
people are not Americans, is represented by O. 

Affirmative A 



r 

Universal 



Propositions. -< 



Particular 



V. 



Negative E 

Affirmative I 
Negative O 



Thought 133 

Application Step.— I. Test each syllogism of the Prepa- 
ration Step. The test for the last is : 

X y 

1. No Americans are Europeans ;=E=xy 

X z 

2. Some Europeans are progressive people,=^'I=yz 

z 

3. Therefore, some progressive people are not Ameri- 
X xy 

cans.=:0=zx, EIO in yz 

zx 



o 




The second proposition says that some y's are z's, there- 
fore the circle containing the y's overlaps that of the z's 
and the syllogism is valid. 

II. How many different syllogisms of three propositions 
each is it possible to make out of the four propositions 
A, E, I, and ? 

You can have AAA AEA 

AAE then AIA and so on. 

AAI AOA 

AAO 

If you work them all out, you will find that you can make 
in all sixty-four. Each one of these must be tested in each 
of the four figures, and this multiplication makes 256 
syllogisms. 

III. For the sake of familiarizing yourself with the 
propositions and the figures, test all 2.56 by the circles. You 



134 Lessons in Psychology 

will come out with the following valid syllogisms iu each 
figure : 



First. 


Second. 


Third. 


Fourth. 


AAA 


E A E 


A A I 


A A I 


E A E 


A E E 


I A I 


A E E 


All 


E I 


A I I 


I A I 


E I 


A 


E A 


E A 


(A A I) 


(E A 0) 


A 


E I 


(E A 0) 


(A E 0) 


E I 


i(A E 0) 



IV. Expand into syllogistic form and test the validity 
of the following arguments : 

No Athenians could have been Helots ; for all Helots were 
slaves, and all Athenians were free men. 

Ireland is idle and therefore starves; she starves, and 
therefore rebels. 

V. Watch to see how much of your thought is in the 
form of judgments and syllogisms, filled out or condensed, 
incipient or complete. 

Lesson III 

CONCEPTION 

Preparation Step.— I. Each syllogism contains three 
terms. We are now ready to analyze the stream of thought 
from the standpoint of the changes that are ever taking 
place in the meaning of terms. 

II. How extensive a traveler are you? How much do 
you enjoy travel 1 Think out the reasons for your answer. 

Let us suppose you have spent four years in a high 
school. Now imagine that, instead of spending these years 
in school, you had spent them in travel: Compare the 
results in the two cases as to health, knowledge, general 
intelligence, integrity of mind, maturity, character, breadth 
and number of interests, resources, manners, memory, 



Thought 135 

power to observe and reason, capability to earn your own 
living and get on with people, to give pleasure to others. 

III. Did you ever mistake, say, any verses for poetry 
which you afterward found were not poetry t Think of 
some definite time when you did. Your idea of poetry was 
changed by the experience. 

Recall instances of mistaking one person for another; 
one object for another, as a box for a book, a grapefruit 
for an orange ; one voice for another. 

IV. Think of cases of uncertainty in identifying objects, 
as when one is doubtful whether a tree is of one kind or 
another ; doubtful as to the use of a knife at table, as 
to a snatch of melody. 

V. Recall how at certain definite times you have changed 
other ideas such as those of teaching, learning, success, 
beauty, right, wrong, duty, selfishness, hardness, pleasure. 

Every change of this sort is surely expressed in language, 
that is, in condensed propositions and syllogisms. 

VI. By analysis is meant the process of loosing, of sep- 
arating what is complex into its elements. Synthesis, on 
the other hand, means the uniting of elements. 

VII. What is a circle ? a basket ■? a crab ? distance 1 steel ? 
a college settlement? a joke? 

Have you defined each term adequately! Yet you have 
no trouble in using these terms. In how many different 
senses have you ever used the term joke, for example? 

Presentation Step. — I. Our ideas are constantly chang- 
ing as a result of our reading, our contact with people, and 
our thinking — in general, as a result of our experience. 
Think how different your idea of amusement is from what 
it was ten or twenty years ago. Define it in each case. 

II. All thinking is thus a process of classification, of 
subsuming our concrete experience under one or another 



136 Lessons in Psychology 

class, or excluding it from a class, according to the laws of , 
association. By each concrete experience some class, as 
poetry, is made broader or narrower in its extension, and 
more definite in its own peculiar meaning, or intension. 

All the changes that take place in our ideas come under 
one of four kinds : 

Take, for example, some of the changes that have taken 
place in my idea of desk. I formerly thought that any 
object upon which one might write was a desk, a) When 
I found that a desk must have a slanting top, many objects 
that before were included in the class desk (such as tables, 
shelves) had to be excluded. Thus my notion of desk is 
both narrowed and made more definite. Again, b) I had 
to drop the idea that the top was tilted to display the or- 
namentation, thus excluding a table with the top so turned. 
c) At another time I added the quality that desks may be 
used in churches, thereby including the lectern in the 
class desk, d) I later dropped from the class desk the 
quality that they must have legs, thereby including in the 
class the sloping shelf-like desk in a bank. 

These changes are onh^ types of those taking place every 
time I have an experience with a desk or think of one. 
They may be briefly classified as follows: 

a ) By synthesis, when I added the 
characteristic, "Must have 
slanting top," thereby exclud- 
ing certain tables for writing 
that I had before called desks; 

b) By analysis, when I dropped 
the characteristic "slanted to 
display the top," and excluded 
a mosaic table from the class 
desk. 



narrowed the range 
or extension of my<! 
notion of desk 



Thought 



137 



I broadened the exten- 



desk 



/^a) By synthesis, when I added the 

quality "used for reading/' 

thereby including in the class 

„ ^- r. desk lecterns; 

sion 01 my notion oi J , , ^^ , . , ^ ^ 

^^^^^ ] b) By analysis, when I dropped 

the idea that desks must have 

legs, thereby including in the 

extension the desk in a bank. 

As a result of my life-long experience I have broadened 
the extension of the class to include not only desks in school- 
rooms, lecterns, and bank desks, but also portable writing- 
desks of all kinds and materials, office desks, cashiers' 
desks, and all the individual desks I have seen or heard of. 
In fact, with every experience of a desk, even every thought of 
one, I have broadened my class to include one more instance. 

But, at the same time, every thought of desk has the 
effect of narrowing the extension of my notion, in that it 
removes something of the vagueness and superficiality of 
the intension (or group of qualities without which an object 
is not a desk) and thus rules out objects before included. 

III. Accustom yourself to analyze the changes in many 
notions. Work out these analyses somewhat as follows: 

I remember to have changed my idea of root : 

^a) By synthesis, when I added to 
the intension of the idea the 
quality that roots must be un- 
der-ground, thus excluding 
from the extension the runners 
of a strawberry ; 
b) By analysis, when I dropped 
the quality that they may have 
nodes, thus excluding from the 
extension of roots the potato. 



once narrowed the 
range, or extension <^ 
of my idea of root 



138 



Lessons in Psychology 



I broadened the exten- 



root 



I narrowed the range, 
or extension of my<; 
idea of teaehinsr 



'a) At another time by synthesis. 

when I added the quality that 

roots may be in the air, thus in- 

„ . ^ „ eluding aerial roots ; 
sion 01 my idea ot^ , x t^ , • , t i . 
^ ] b) By analysis, when 1 dropped 

the quality that roots must be 

fibrous, thereby admitting fleshy 

roots like the carrot. 

My idea of teaching has been changed many times. A 
few of the changes were : 

a) By synthesis, when I added the 
quality that teaching must stim- 
ulate the mind, thus shutting 
out of the class instances of 
formalism ; 

b) By analysis, when I dropped 
from the intension of the class 
the quality that teaching may 
be the mere hearing of recita- 
tions, thereby excluding from 
the class instances of hearing 
pupils recite. 

^sl) By synthesis, when I added to 
the intension the quality that 
teaching may take place out of 
schools, to include cases of 
teaching by events; 
b) By analysis, when I dropped 
from the intension the idea that 
teaching must be done by a 
person, thereby including in- 
stances of teaching done by 
books. 



I broadened the exten- 
sion of my idea of-< 
teaching 



Thought 139 

IV. When we try to hunt down the "deskness" of the 
desk, that group of qualities without which the object 
would not be a desk, we find that the most abstract and 
general notion we can think is the group of words, "A 
support with a slanting top." This sort of statement of 
the intension (the group of qualities without which it 
would not be what it is) and extension (the range, or 
breadth) of an idea is a definition, "such a description of 
a thing as distinguishes it from everything else by briefly 
telling what it is," and a definition is perhaps as near as 
we can get to a "logical concept." A pure abstraction and 
generalization, however, a pure concept is unthinkable by 
a finite mind. 

Some one has said that just as in medicine there are no 
diseases but only patients, so in thought there are no gen- 
eral notions but only perceptions that belong to classes. 

V. Yet the activities of abstraction, generalization, and 
their opposites are real experiences, and we are abstracting 
and generalizing at every moment. It is these processes, 
in fact, that we have been studying. 

I was generalizing when I broadened the range of my 
class desk to include lectern. I was hindering the process 
of generalization, or specializing when I added the quality, 
"slanting top," and, at the same time I was abstracting 
the "deskness" of desks from the accidental qualities of 
particular color, form, size, and use. 

The opposite of the process of generalization is that of 
specialization. It consists in narrowing the extension of 
a general term. The opposite of the process of abstraction 
is that of making concrete. 

When we are making more general the application of 
class names to individuals, we are generalizing; when we 
are dwelling upon the peculiar "thingness" of the thing 



1-10 Lessons in Psychology 

as separated from its accidental qualities, we are ab- 
stracting. 

VI. When we are studying the stream of thought from 
the standpoint of its constant processes of abstraction, gen- 
eralization, and their opposites our standpoint is that of 
Thought. 

Since they are an unthinkable abstraction, no definition 
of "concepts" can be given. 

Application Step.— I. As a result of this process of 
thought the mind moves ever toward a realization of truth. 
Here, again, as in so many other places we come to a con- 
sciousness of its, the mind's limitation in that we can never 
know absolute truth, the abstract "concept," — the truth we 
know is always individual and relative. There is an advance 
toward truth, however, with every thought. Some notion 
has become broader and narrower in its extension, more 
adequate in its intension. 

II. I have used the term "logic concepts." Of course, 
as has been said, we never have concepts of any sort in our 
stream of thought. We do, however, constantly think some 
intension in the terms of sensations or words. But it is 
only when we look at this intension (which is always a 
perception, an individual notion) from the standpoint of 
abstraction, generalization, and their opposites that it 
becomes a matter of conception. These imperfect, often 
even mistaken, inadequate intensions that we think from 
moment to moment are what the books call "psychological 
concepts." 

You will ask, perhaps, has not a word some one meaning 
that we think, the same for all occasions? It has not one, 
but many, many meanings. In fact, it never has just the 
same meaning for us even twice. Think, for example, in 
how many different senses you have used the term "man" 



Thought 141 

—this last use differs from every other, at least, in that it 
is for you the thousand and first use rather than the 
thousandth use, your thousand and first "psychological con- 
cept" of man. 

Such a statement, on the other hand, as "The apple is 
the fruit of the apple-tree, ' ' one that represents the broad- 
est generalization and the most abstract abstraction of a 
scientific type,— such a statement is the best guess of trained 
specialists of a wide and lifelong experience in the subject 
as to that impossible abstraction, ' ' a logical concept. ' ' 

Think how much progress has been made in the process 
of formulating these abstractions from the time of Plato 
with his "types laid up in heaven" down to the present 
with its many sciences— and particularly during the last 
fifty years. 

III. A concept is not, then, some thing, a mental product, 
always the same that we can learn once for all, retain, 
recall, and use. The intension, that rapid review, usually 
in words, of qualities some of which are common to all of 
a class, is never twice the same. It is upon this fact that 
is based the most important application of the study of 
thought for teaching. 

Education, whatever else it is, is also the process of 
making "psychological concepts" into more nearly "logi- 
cal concepts," true wisdom available for daily living. And 
the process is a slow one and one constantly continuing, 
the work of a lifetime. A pupil can no more learn enough 
in ten years to equip him for all time than he can eat 
enough in ten years to last for the rest of his life. 

That one never arrives should be no discouragement — 
that condition is one of life itself. The aim of school is 
to place one in the best possible position to continue learn- 
ing in ever higher forms of thought to ever more complete 
maturitv. 



142 Lessons in Psychology 

IV. As you accustom yourself to analyze the changes in 
the intension and extension of your ideas and become 
familiar with the constant modifications that take place in 
them, you will realize more and more fully how individual 
a matter the process of reaching truth by reasoning is. You 
cannot learn for another person any more than you can eat 
for the nourishment of that other's body. Changes are 
taking place at every moment in some idea, and it takes all 
this lifelong series of changes (the so-called "psychological 
concepts") to make into an adequate "logical concept," 
that is, the particular intension and extension represented 
by a definition that shall be the broadest working idea, 
available from the hundred and one standpoints where one 
needs to use it. 

Sometimes a pupil will recite the words of a definition 
glibly, and even remember it till the examination. We 
flatter ourselves that we have taught him something. In 
proportion, however, as the words are merely mechanical, 
as "his tongue says it for him," is the "'earning" useless, 
worthless, and even injurious. In proportion, on the other 
hand, as the learning involves his own psychological inten- 
sions of a lifetime is it educative. 

V. "One would learn to know all the animals of the 
world more quickly by visiting Noah's Ark than by trav- 
ersing the world, and picking up knowledge as we went." 
(Quoted by John Adams in "Herbartian Psychology Ap- 
plied to Education. ") 

A visit to the ark apparently would save much time and 
pains to school children. Yet, compare for a moment the 
results of the two methods, "Ark teaching" and "travers- 
ing the world. ' ' 

To be sure one could learn to name the animals and 
could study comparative anatomy in the ark. But what 
about the explanation of each animal himself? He is the 



Thought 143 

result of his environment and can be understood, compre- 
hended only in that environment. Not all the animals can 
have their environment with them in the "ark," therefore 
they can be adequately learned only in their homes by the 
' ' journey method. ' ' 

But it is not in zoology alone that schools practice "ark- 
teaching." Witness the museums; "lists of specific grav- 
ities;" "lists of words spelled the same but having differ- 
ent meanings;" that "Ark of Arks," the dictionary, and 
many other cases. 

These devices indeed are supposed to save children the 
time and labor of "traversing the world and picking up 
knowledge as they go," but their results are really formal 
and worthless. 

The defect of "ark teaching" is that it wrests facts 
from their right relations, the only place where they can be 
truly learned, and arranges them arbitrarily. It gives 
empty "logical concepts" where traversing the world 
makes the "psychological concepts" into "logical" ones at 
every step. 

Of course one could hardly recommend seriously that 
children be literally taken to the ends of the earth to edu- 
cate them, yet the truth that learning in proportion as it 
involves facts distorted from their true places is worthless, 
is indisputable. And we have to remember, moreover, that 
education takes time and that it is the process not of avoid- 
ing trouble but of "learning to take pains." 

Yet the "Ark," the museum, and the dictionary have a 
place in education and an important one. It is not before 
experience, however, but after or at the end of it. (Read 
"Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education," John 
Adams.) 

VI. Suppose all books, all records of classified knowledge 
were now destroyed: What would be the effect from this 



1-14 Lessons in Psychology 

time forward on the amount of each person's knowledge, 
say, your own ? On your memories i Your power to rea- 
son? Your self-reliance? Your capability"? Y^'our hap- 
piness '? 

VII. M^hat is a chair ? a house '? a hotel ? -a horse ? a circle ? 
What is the meaning of yes! boy? graft? love? laughter? 

Answer these questions offhand and give them to your 
friends. Find out how near the real intension of these 
notions your "psychological intensions" come. 

If you do not know the meaning of these terms, think of 
others whose meaning you do know. Doesn't it seem re- 
markable that we get along so well as we do, knowing the 
real significance of so few words that we use? Would it 
be of advantage to us to know "intensions" more ade- 
quately than we do ? Of what advantage would it be ? 

The range and intension of our thoughts are of evident 
importance in life. "If," for example, "our concept of 
pleasure is limited to the feeling accompanying the satis- 
fying of sensual appetites, we shall have trouble to com- 
prehend pleasure as related to intellectual achievement, 
spiritual communion, or esthetic appreciation * * * 
we must have a broad experience." ("The Mind and Its 
Education," G. H. Betts.) 

Notice the sources of "logical intensions:" For some 
we must go to the dictionary, for others to technical books 
in science, to text-books, or to statutes, decisions of courts, 
to sages who as a result of their peculiar experience, a life- 
time of dwelling upon the qualities common to all of a 
class, can "speak with crushing authority" and who, 
with a mighty grasp of relations can ' ' think God 's thoughts 
after Him." 



Thought 145 

Lesson IV 

INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION 

Preparation Step. — I. The stream of thought in its 
processes of abstraction, generalization, and their opposites 
may be studied from another standpoint, that of Induction 
and Deduction. 

II. What changes have tal^en place in your idea of metal 
since you were a child 1 Think concretely how you would 
have described a metal then, and how the idea has changed 
from time to time since. Where would you go to find out 
what a metal is? 

III. Think how the sciences of chemistry, physics, as- 
tronomy, biology, and sociology have grown up and been 
formulated. Was arithmetic formulated in the same w^ay'? 
or algebra! or geometry! Did the formation of the last 
three, like that of the others, depend on investigation, re- 
search, and discovery! 

IV. I must urge you to keep up the practice of analyz- 
ing what you learn into its constituent secondary material, 
also, of analyzing your experience from the standpoint of 
teaching. 

V. Say over the axioms of mathematics. Can you im- 
agine any exception to the first one ! Can you imagine any 
to the law of gravity! 

Recent investigations in electrical inductance have shown 
that it is a law more fundamental than gravity even. 

Presentation Step.— I. Any self-evident truth is an 
axiom. Since they cannot be analyzed into simple compo- 
nents, axioms are the simplest facts in nature. The next 
most simple facts are the laws and definitions, formulated 
in the course of human experience, that constitute the dif- 
10 



146 Lessons in Psychology 

ferent sciences. But not all of these laws and definitions 
are of the same degree of simplicity, as constant investiga- 
tion and research often analyze those before thought to 
be fundamental into something simpler. The theory has 
thus arisen that all the generalizations of science are in 
process of becoming axiomatic. 

II. Relatively complex, on the other hand, are the con- 
crete experiences. The different metals, for example, that 
are on my table, the brass of my lamp, the mercury in my 
thermometer, the steel of my knife, the gold of my watch 
and pen are groups of many qualities, accidental and var- 
iable. In the course of my experience I have analyzed these 
complex groups, stripped away their accidental qualities 
such as color, hardness, solidity, lustre, weight, sonorous- 
ness, and abstracted, synthesized from them the simple 
group of attributes common to all, imtil I have as the defi- 
nition of metal : Any substance, usually elementary, elec- 
tro-positive chemically, and forming with the elements of 
water a base is a metal. 

III. The process by which through analysis of complex 
concrete instances, synthesis of their common elements, 
and incidental confirmations,— this process by W'hich the 
mind reaches and verifies simple general truths involves 
both induction and deduction. In actual experience both 
methods seem to be involved in the same complex act. 

Considered abstractly, however, when we are looking at 
the stream of thought from the side of reaching the simple 
general truths, our standpoint is that of Induction. 

When, from the side of applying these generalizations 
to concrete instances, either in proof, confirmation, or in 
extending knowledge, our standpoint is that of Deduction. 

Application Step.— I. Considering them absolutely, no- 
tice some of the contrasts between these methods : 



Thought 



147 



INDUCTION 

Proceeds from complex 
to simple, from particular 
to general, from concrete to 
abstract ; 

Is empirical, that is, lim- 
ited to experience, scientific. 

Its reasoning is based on 
experience, therefore, a 
posteriori. 



DEDUCTION, 

Proceeds from simple to 
complex, from general to 
particular, from abstract to 
concrete ; 

Is rational, that is, has to 
do with the reason rather 
than experience, metaphy- 
sical. 

Its reasoning is from pre- 
viously assumed general- 
izations, a priori. 



The two methods are identical in that both are processes 
of inference. 

II. The empirical sciences have been built up by the 
formulation of general truths ascertained from observation 
of and experiment on particular facts. These generaliza- 
tions serve as the bases for the classification of phenomena 
in logical order, thus making science. 

But the logical order of scientific classification is not 
always the order most easily comprehended and followed 
by the mind in learning. For the attitude of the learner is 
ever that of the discoverer; to have an intelligent knowl- 
edge of the sciences, he, the learner, must literally make 
them for himself by the slow processes of induction and 
deduction. This statement does not mean that he must go 
through all the difficulties and discouragements of the dis- 
coverer of truth. But, though a teacher may remove im- 
possibilities and arrange conditions, it is always the learner 
himself must do the learning. 

III. Think of a text-book in botany made only of log- 
ically arranged generalizations. When an average house- 
bred city child used, a few years ago, to learn the general- 



148 Lessons in Psychology 

izations in this kind of book from cover to cover, he gained 
from the experience little more in intelligence than a parrot 
would have gained. 

We are only looking, you see, at the old difificulty of 
"Ark teaching," but from a new standpoint. It is only 
by "traversing the world and picking up knowledge as he 
goes" or by a method analogous to this one, the slow method 
of induction and deduction, that a child can so master 
knowledge that it will become available and effective as 
ideals and motives. 

IV. Analyze your concrete acts of the last hour from the 
standpoint of deduction : I, for example, just wound my 
watch (a concrete experience), because I knew, in general, 
that unwound watches stop ; I cut out some clippings from 
a paper, as I knew they would be useful in some of my 
work; I read the evening paper, as I always like to know 
what has happened during the day. 

Analyze as applications of different systems of philosophy 
the different schools of medicine, systems of law, political 
parties, systems of theology. Study the concrete applica- 
tions in daily life of maxims and general rules of conduct. 

V. The theory of induction and deduction is applied 
practically and concretely in the Lesson Unit. The method 
thiough the Preparation and the Presentation Step is, in 
general, inductive, through the Application Step, de- 
ductive. 

It is commonly acknowledged that teaching through the 
first two steps is, in many subjects, fairly well ordered, but 
through the Application Step (except in some parts of 
mathematics) it must be conceded to be weak. 

VI. "AVe have fallen from one extreme to the other: 
whereas formerly a hard and lifeless instruction laid the 
chief emphasis upon the memorizing of the text, it is the 
custom of our times largely to neglect the applicaiion of 



Thought 149 

that which is learned; consequently, the ever repeated 
complaint, that though our youth indeed know a great 
deal, they can do but little, that they possess indeed knowl- 
edge, but little capacity and readiness to act, and that upon 
leaving school, the knowledge largely disappears. Where 
drill and application are lacking, where a line of thought 
is developed, but in complete isolation from related thought, 
the capacity of applying this knowledge to its natural and 
appropriate field is soon lost, no matter how clear the 
original thought may have been." ("Apperception," 
Lange. ) 

"It is perhaps the most frightful gift which an evil 
genius makes to his age : knowledge without capacity to 
do. ' ' (Pestalozzi, ' ' How Gertrude Teaches Her Children. ' ') 

VII. In the work on the Lesson-Unit some suggestions 
were given for the Preparation and Presentation Steps. 
Those steps are designed, the first to recall material em- 
pirically known, the second to make this material into one 
or more generalizations. The method in these steps is, in 
general, inductive; that in the Application Step is de- 
ductive. 

Suppose the Preparation and Presentation Steps have 
been given to teach the generalizations : 

1. Oxygen is a colorless, transparent, odorless, tasteless 
gas, somewhat heavier than air. 

2. Chemically it supports combustion and respiration, 
promotes decay and rust. 

The concrete applications of these general truths might 
be somewhat as follows: 

Application Step 

Teacher— Why do we open a draft in a stove? 
Pupil — To let in more air or 0, so that the burning will 
be faster and the heat greater. 



150 Lessons in Psychology 

Teacher— What will happen if we cover the top of a 
lamp chimney'? 

Pupil— The light will go out. 

Teacher— Why? 

Pupil— Because, when the draft is stopped, the is 
exhausted in the chimney. 

Teacher — Why do you cover a burn with oil or flour? 

Pupil— To keep out the O which seems to irritate the 
wound. 

Teacher — Why do you have a cavity in your tooth filled 
with gold or amalgam? 

Pupil — To prevent the from continuing the decay. 

Teacher — Explain why we can fruit and vegetables. 

How is fine fruit preserved in the crates? 

Pupil— It is wrapped in tissue paper to keep the air out 
and to prevent bruising. 

Teacher— Why is the wood-work painted or varnished 
or oiled? Examine all materials in your home as to their 
need of protection or not from oxygen. 

Suppose the atmosphere were all of ; what would be 
the condition of things in respect to combustion, rust, 
decay ? And in respiration ? 

Suppose there were no in the air: answer the above 
question. 

Why should a room be ventilated ? 

Pupil— To supply fresh 0. 

Teacher— How do fish breathe? (To be answered by 
study at home.) 

Teacher — How low down in the order of animal life does 
respiration begin? (Home-work.) 

Teacher— What has breathing to do with the temperature 
of the blood in race history? (Home-work.) 

Teacher— Name metals that do not rust? 

Pupil — Gold and silver do not. 



Thought 151 

Teacher— And this is one reason- why they are precious 
metals. Find out whether tin rusts. (Home-work.) Why 
do we have to paint tin roofs'? 

What is the color of iron rust? 

Pupil— It is red. 

Teacher— Yes, the rouge which the fashionable lady uses 
to paint her cheeks is chemically a sort of iron-rust. 

What is the color of your cheeks when the blood is flow- 
ing freely and rapidly? 

Pupil — They are red. 

Teacher— And what metal is in the blood? 

Pupil— Iron is in the blood. 

Teacher— Yes, and the pink of healthy cheeks is chemi- 
cally really the rust of iron in the blood. So the fashion- 
able lady only helps nature a little ! 

You have seen that in the oxidation of wood, coal, and 
paper in burning, heat is set free, as it is also in the pro- 
cesses of respiration, rust, and decay. Thus as much heat 
is given off in the slow decay of a house during a hundred 
years as would be if the house burned to the ground in half 
as many minutes. 

VIII. A few suggestions on planning the Application 
Step of lessons are : 

1. The purpose of this step, if the work is to be deduc- 
tive, is not mere repetition of the new facts (repetition is 
provided for in the Presentation Step), nor is it to find 
out what pupils know or have learned from the lesson. Its 
purpose is to cause pupils to apply in many well-known 
concrete instances the generalizations of the Presentation 
Step, to increase general intelligence and all-around capa- 
bility, to give "The maximum of opportunity with the 
minimum of requirement," ("requirement" as ordinarily 
understood, a hated task.) 



152 Lessons in Psychology 

2. Much of the material of the Preparation Step may be 
explained by pupils in this step. 

(The material of the Preparation Step is made up of 
well-known facts which have been observed, but are for 
the most part only empirically known. In the Application 
Step pupils should be able to explain it all scientifically.) 

3. The Application Step as the culmination of the lesson 
should stimulate and inspire pupils to constant observation, 
investigation, research, study, thought, creation, action, 
and positive self-direction in connection with this particu- 
lar lesson, without as well as within school, everywhere and 
always. 



CHAPTER VII 

ATTENTION 

Lesson I 

DEFINITION OF ATTENTION 

Pkeparation Step.— I. Pay attention to what passes in 
the street for ten minutes. At the end of that time write 
out as much as you can recall of all that passed through 
your mind while you were at the window. 

II. Notice how the body adjusted itself in this act of 
attention. The head and trunk, no doubt, bent forward, 
all the muscles seemed to converge toward that to which 
you attended. 

Make a study of such physiological adjustments when- 
ever you are attending to anything. Notice, also, other phy- 
siological accompaniments of attention, such as scowling, 
straining the muscles, sighing, changes in breathing, and 
the circulation of the blood. 

III. Watch for instances in yourself and others of imita- 
tion of action that you see ; watch cases of the acting out of 
thoughts, as, when I thought of cutting with the shears, my 
lower jaw began to move ; I know of a person who cut him- 
self with a knife through very fear of cutting. 

Watch cases of control of bodily movement and condi- 
tion by persistent dwelling on an ideal. 

IV. The etymology of the word attend shows it to be 
made up of two parts meaning to stretch and to or toward. 

V. Notice how large a part of all trains of association is 
made up of judgments, propositions, or affirmations, either 
expressed or implied, complete or condensed. 



154 Lessons in Psychology 

VI, Are you realizing more and more fully that the fleet- 
ing present is a constant rearrangement of your past °l That 
it is secondary material that makes each thought of both 
the outer and the inner order? 

VII. Pay attention to your pencil for fifteen minutes : 
perhaps what you thought was somewhat like these series : 
"Pay attention to the pencil! Muscular sensations of 
scowling; Why, what shall I think"? Visual image, The 
pencil is red ; Visual image, It is pretty well used up ; 
Visual image. It has a tin cap to hold the rubber; sound 
sensations. What a cracked bell ! I hear that bell every time 
the car goes around the corner. Secondary visual image 
of the car, A yellow car ; primary visual image of my table 
— I was to pay attention to my pencil ; where was it made? 
They made pencils at Keswick ; Secondary visual image of 
a stone bridge, a stream, and trees with the gables of 
Southey 's home. How hard it rained that morning ! Pri- 
mary smell sensations of fresh ironing. Miss P. must have 
finished. It is getting late. I must pay attention to my 
pencil," and so on. 

Presentation Step. — I. For how much of the time were 
you paying attention to the pencil? 

I was attending to it while I was thinking of it. 

Each element and group of elements as it comes along in 
the stream of thought is related to others— often this rela- 
tion is definitely thought out in words, judgments, propo- 
siticns. In the terms of propositions, when w^ere you at- 
tending to the pencil? 

I was attending to it when it, the pencil, formed one 
member of the propositions, (as w^hen I thought. It is 
almost used up; I wonder where it was made). 

You were attending to the pencil, then, for perhaps ten 
out of twenty judgments. 



Attention 155 

What were you doing the rest of the time? 

I was attending to something else. 

For how much of the time were you attending to some- 
thing "? 

I must have been attending to something all the time. 

II. We are indeed attending to some thought always, 
now, to a first member, again to subsequent members of 
trains of association ; now to the outer order, again to the 
inner order. Attention is only another standpoint, then, 
from which to study the stream of thought. 

When one is regarding the process of taking possession 
by the mind of an idea by being conscious of this idea in 
its relations, often by expressing consciously those relations 
in judgments incipient or completed, the standpoint is that 
of Attention, 

Application Step.— I. Contrast the standpoints of 
thought and attention: 

In studying mental life under the aspect of thought we 
are dwelling upon generalization and abstraction through 
judgment and reasoning; under that of attention, we are 
dwelling upon the process of "stretching the thought tow- 
ard" an idea. Both acts involve the process of judgment. 

II. A question of perennial interest is, to how many 
thoughts can we attend at once f Though the question can- 
not perhaps be answered categorically, there are certain lines 
of observation suggested by it that are profitable to follow. 

First. Have you ever tried to appreciate, to realize the 
quickness of thought in your own experience "? How slowly 
the members of the body, the pen, and even the tongue 
move compared with thought. 

The typewriting record is just now held by a woman who 
wrote 87 words a minute. Two women have just earned 
championships for speed on ''arithmetical devices," one 



156 Lessons in Psychology 

as the adder and lister of 500 checks in seven minutes, 
53 seconds, the other by adding on a simple adding machine 
a column of 34 lines in three and four figure items in 23 
seconds. These people must have had to think quickly. 
Yet probably you often think as quickly as they did — 
only not in ways that can be tested like these. 

The British Society of Musicians publishes this statement : 
In the present state of piano playing the eye of the pianist 
must be cultivated to see about 1500 signs in one minute, 
the fingers to make about 2,000 movements, the brain to 
receive and understand separately the 1,500 signs while it 
issues the 2,000 orders. 

Second. Notice that the two questions, How many things 
can you do at a given time, and, How many thoughts 
can you think simultaneously, are not at all the same 
question. 

Think how many acts are performed by the muscles 
alone, with only a start or direction by the quickly shifting 
mind. Watch in writing how many words your hand writes 
for you ; in speaking, how many words your tongue says 
with only the most fleeting guidance from time to time 
by your consciousness. 

Notice, moreover, how many different sets of muscles one 
can keep going under this flitting direction of conscious- 
ness. While the fingers are playing the piano, the tongue 
can be kept talking quite intelligently, the eyes watching 
the movements of- a person near, the ears listening to the 
answers and questions of this person and several others — 
all these under the superintendence of the stream of 
thought, which passes with marvelous quickness from one 
to another function. 

Third. Why do you close your eyes at the telephone? 
Why, choose a sheltered place to read ? Is it not in the first 
case because Avhat you see distracts you? That is, you 



Attention 157 

cannot attend both to what you see and to the conversa- 
tion on the telephone, also, simultaneously. You attend to 
one at a time. 

A student was in a room where she heard the intermittent 
whir of machinery for an hour. She heard, also, during 
this time, water dripping from a faucet. Upon leaving the 
room she was surprised to discover that the whir of the 
machinery was not intermittent but steady — it had seemed 
to cease when she had, at intervals, attended to the drip- 
ping of the water. That is, while she attend«ed to the drip- 
ping she did not hear the whir. 

To a person untrained in music a chord is one sound. 
Trained musicians, on the other hand, if they analyze the 
complex, think the different notes in quick succession. 

All of these matters are of interest in connection with the 
question as to whether we attend to more than one thought 
at a given time, or whether the ultimate elements of thougnt 
are successive. 

III. As to the physiological accompaniments or con- 
ditions of attention : 

The nervous system consists in general of pairs of nerves, 
an out-carrying coupled with each in-carrying nerve, run- 
ning from the surface and organs of the body to the brain 
and spinal cord. The stimulus of every in-carrying nerve, 
whether there is a discriminated result in mind or not, is 
followed by the response of a corresponding out-carrying 
nerve which brings about motion, actual or incipient, in 
the muscles, and these movements leave behind in the brain 
motor residua, we remember them. Thereafter, by the law 
of habit, movement is inherent in the image, "every image 
contains a tendency towards motion." Just as secondary 
visual or other images do not always possess hallucinatory 
vividness, so the motor elements may exist only in a nascent 
state. As you read or think these words, for example, are 



158 Lessons in Psychology 

not the muscles of your tongue and throat working rapidly, 
ineipiently pronouncing the words? 

In infancy and early childhood all the muscular move- 
ments incited by the elferent nerves take place. Mental 
life is mostly outer, primary, — trains of association are 
short, consequently there can be little thought or control 
of the attention. With added experience and years these 
random activities come, some of them to be inhibited, others 
to be the co-ordinated, controlled, skilled movements of 
maturity. Though in the process of training, much of the 
spontaneous, useless activity is suppressed, or at least only 
ineipiently executed, there is still a result in mind from the 
stimulation of the afferent and efferent nerves. Thus 
thought has been described as "repressed action," the re- 
sult in mind of incipient action, or, as Bain has it, "To 
think is to refrain from speaking or acting." 

Any physical excitation produces a movement. Stimu- 
lation from any complex object produces incessantly re- 
peated adaptation. Attention is not then a continuous, 
formal faculty in ahstracto. Ribot describes it as a "psy- 
cho-physiological complex * * * intellectual mon- 
oideism, " the result in mind of successive spontaneous or 
artificial adaptations of the individual. 

"Motor manifestations with their subjective side are 
attention. ' ' 

IV. The above facts are wide in their application, and 
of profound significance in the study of a human being as 
a self-adjusting mechanism. Make a study of and explain 
muscular movement (except automatic and reflex move- 
ments) by them. 

Take first the cases of simple imitation,— such as, in speak- 
ing with a person who stuttered the image of the convulsion 
was so vivid in my mind that I with difficulty controlled 
my own tongue. A mother in watching her daughter re- 



Attention 159 

cite imitated the movements of lips, facial muscles, and 
gestures. These movements were ' ' inherent in the images ' ' 
in her mind, that is, fundamentally associated with them 
through the instinctive and lifelong relation of afferent 
and efferent nerves. 

Study concrete instances to realize how much of our 
lives is imitation of others in matters of dress, mode of 
living, occupations, beliefs, ideals, amusements, and morals. 

Second. The case of acting out a thought in mind : As 
I read the words, "deep breathing," I took a deep breath. 
A teacher gave in an examination the topic, "The Pleas- 
ures of Memory." She could tell when the pupils were 
writing on this topic by the expression of their faces. 

Not long ago I met a Japanese law student who had come 
to this country to study medicine. He explained as the 
reason for the change in his course that he had suft'ered so 
greatly from all the diseases he studied about in the medi- 
cal books that he had been obliged to give up that work. 

V. This instinctive, naive relation between thought and 
action is so strong that we have come to speak of it as con- 
trol of the body by the mind. 

In the matter of this influence, psychology has not yet 
seriously advocated control that involves organic changes, 
though it sees nothing unreasonable in mental control of 
all functional bodily changes. The application here is an 
important and far-reaching one for education. 

VI. Habitual thoughts and moods in spite of us control 
the movements of the body, especially the finely adjusted 
and flexible muscles of the face, and these muscles are thus, 
in time, so modified that, to a discriminating observer, a 
face reveals something of mood, nature, and character. 

VII. In general the effect of controlled attention on 
muscular adjustment is to give skill ; on the senses, to 
sharpen them; and on the emotions, to strengthen them. 



160 Lessons in Psychology 

Lesson II 

CONTROL OF THE ATTENTION 

Preparation Step.— I. In what are you most interested? 
If you are approaching twenty years of age, think about 
your interest in, say, fiction ; your friends ; dress ; athletics ; 
your work; your future plans; air castles. 

II. Think out concretely and at your leisure how we 
should get on if we had no curiosity, no inquisitiveness as 
to the affairs of daily life, how and what to eat, to wear, 
what to do at home and abroad, — no desire to know what 
books say, what is to be seen in the world, what has been 
and is being done. 

Suppose we had no fear of dangers that may arise in the 
street ; of unsanitary conditions in the house or city ; of 
poverty, wrong, dishonor, and of a thousand other things 
and conditions. 

Suppose we were inattentive to hunger; to all the inter- 
ests that arise from instincts of affection for other people. 

If we had not paid attention to these matters, what would 
be our condition as individuals and as a race, and how 
long could we have existed 1 

III. Watch a child for an hour to discover how much 
control he has over his attention. Discover, also, the nature 
of the ideas to which he gives his spontaneous attention. 

IV. A little child left a book out of doors. It rained, 
the book was ruined, and the child was punished. Later 
he left another book out of doors. This time when it 
threatened rain he remembered to take care of the book. 
What is his train of associations likely to have been? 

As he grew older, in proportion to the effectiveness of 
his training in responsibility, he no longer left the book 
out till the rain fell, he remembered it, he came upon the 



Attention 161 

idea of responsibility in trains of association before the 
danger came. 

V. Accustom yourself to watch your trains of associa- 
tion for the presence in some form of the idea of paying 
attention. Glance over the last few pages that you have 
been through in a book you are reading in order to find the 
places where you "came back," or came upon the thought 
of attending again. With the idea, "I must pay attention 
— I must work hard"— muscular strain begins. One "sits 
up," the forehead is scowled, the jaw is set, the hand or 
other muscles become rigid, and often it is the conscious- 
ness of this strain that is followed by the thought of con- 
trol. One thinks, why am I scowling ? yes, I was paying 
attention to my work: then he starts in again to attend. 

VI. Since we make the present out of the secondary 
material that we have, that secondary material must de- 
termine largely what the present can be. AVhat we can 
attend to, then, the relations we can make, depends on 
what secondary material we have potentially. 

VII. Do you know any one who is absent-minded? I 
know a person who, because she was thinking of something 
else, left her key in the door she had just unlocked. 

Presentation Step.— In considering the subject of 
training the attention two matters are to be noticed: 

1) The difference in ability to pay attention that mental 
content, its a) amount and b) nature, makes. 

2) Control. 

1. a. A musician is readily attentive to matters that have 
to do with his profession. How does the amount of his 
mental content on the subject of music and allied interests, 
the number of facts he knows in right relations here, com- 
pare with the number of facts he knows in other lines, 
say, house-keeping ? He is likely to know much more about 
11 



162 Lessons in Psychology 

music than he knows about the other matters. To a given 
book on music that he may be reading, he brings a great 
wealth of material with which to make relations and pay 
attention. 

Suppose that you do not know Greek,— how long could 
you pay intelligent attention to a page of this language? 
Not long, as you do not bring to it any associations that 
would enable you to judge of the meaning of the page,— 
even though that page be a letter from your dearest friend. 
Suppose next that every other word only on the page were 
Greek— relatively how long could you attend to the page? 
Then suppose that every word is in English, what would be 
your condition as to attention ? It would indeed be active. 

"When confronting any scientific problem, the New- 
tonian mind * * * falls a prey to a perpetual irrita- 
tion, which holds it in its power without cessation or rest. ' ' 
Ribot. 

These examples illustrate the difference that the amount 
of material, the number of facts known makes in ability to 
pay attention. 

b. As to the difference in ability to pay attention made 
by the nature of the mental content stimulated : 

The activity of fundamental instincts makes a large 
amount of our experience from childhood up. In child- 
hood the thoughts made out of these native tendencies 
alone can hold the attention. A child at a certain time, 
for example, feels a fundamental interest in his food and 
objects connected with it. Later he is interested, among 
other things, in the life of the periods of chivalry. At this 
time he will master and live out an enormous content from 
this period of race history with the most absorbed attention. 

We speak of experiences of the outer order as "attract- 
ing" our attention. The term "attract" is misleading, be- 
cause not every bodily stimulus brings about a discrim- 



Attention 163 

mated result in mind. "My experience" furthermore, "is 
what I agree to attend to * * * without selective in- 
terest, experience is an utter chaos * * *. Interest 
alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, back- 
ground and foreground — intelligible perspective, in a word. 
It varies in every creature." (William James, "Principles 
of Psychology.") 

The motives to attend to primary experiences have been 
arranged according to the attractiveness they have gained 
in the course of evolution in the following order : 1. Curi- 
osity ; 2, Fear ; 3. Hunger ; 4. Love ; 5. Use. 

To sum up, the musician is interested in his music, a 
child is interested in the life of the periods of chivalry. In 
each case the attention for the topic of interest is spon- 
taneous and may last for a relatively long time. In the 
last case, that of the chivalrous child, the interest is evi- 
dently made out of instincts; in the first, this fact is not 
so patently yet none the less surely true. Though all in- 
terests trace back ultimately to instincts, the great amount 
of knowledge, the large system of facts known makes pos- 
sible the interest of the musician and the scientist. 

Given a) a wealth of mental content on a given subject, 
or b) a native interest in it, one can pay attention to it. 

2. Control: Though our thoughts are ever "stretching 
toward" something, it is not always the right thing. The 
musician perhaps is attending to music when he should be 
attending to counting money. The process of training the 
attention must be one by which we gain control of it, so 
that we can attend to whatever we wish whenever we wish. 

Whatever else control is, it is noticeable that it is a pro- 
cess of constantly returning to a consciousness of control, to 
the idea of attending in some form. Clearly unless one 
meets this idea he does not realize that he is "wool 
gathering. ' ' 



164 Lessons in Psychology 

One way then to help gain control of attention, or to 
make it voluntary, is to get the idea of paying attention 
into many trains of associations, to make it a dominant one, 
so that, no matter on what subject one may start out to 
think, he cannot get far afield before he comes upon the 
thought of having his wits about him, of being responsible, 
of not forgetting, of improving his time, of not procras- 
tinating, or any of the many forms that this idea of control 
may take as a result of his training. "The faculty of 
voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and 
over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and 
will. No one is compos sui if he have it not." (William 
James, "The Principles of Psychology.") 

Application Step. — I. What would be the effect on at- 
tention if we had no primary sensations, no outer exper- 
iences? We come nearest to such a condition at night, 
when we go to sleep. There is a case on record of a boy, 
a defective, who was deprived of all his senses except the 
sight of one eye. When his attendant wished to put him 
to sleep, he closed that eye and the boy went to sleep with 
the regularity of a machine. The effect of primary sen- 
sations is to keep us awake, attentive. 

II. What we shall attend to in each case, and what the 
successive members of trains of associations shall be, seem 
to be ultimately a result of race experience. We attend, 
for example, to the painful sensations follwing contact with 
fire because that result has proved a useful one to which 
to attend. Inattention to it was followed by destruction. 
We never attend, on the other hand, to the dark that we 
might experience from the constant closing of the eyes in 
winking. Before noticing this fact, it seems to us that 
our eyes are always open. To attend to the dark intervals 
has never been useful to us. 



Attention 165 

III. The power of concentration is sometimes worshiped 
as the desirable end in training the attention. But is it 
really so desirable a thing for ordinary people"? What is 
absent-mindedness but concentration, though on the wrong 
thing! Perhaps, however, if one had concentration enough 
he would not then be ordinary, and, while he was doing 
great things, he could have a keeper to attend to all the 
common concerns of life. At any rate, if one has control, 
he can concentrate his attention when he wishes and dis- 
tribute it when that is necessary. 

IV. So far as the process goes, there seems to be no 
ditference between controlled, or volimtary attention, non- 
voluntary, and involuntary attention. Voluntary atten- 
tion, however, is always characterized by a sense of effort— 
perhaps the "mental reverberation of the physical strain," 
the muscular or bodily strain that is the physiological ac- 
companiment of the thought of control. 

V. What ways do you take to help control your atten- 
tion when you sit down to work ? Suppose you are writing 
a theme: Do you think it all out before you begin to 
write f Or do you sit down with pen and paper at a famil- 
iar table in your room? Do not the sight and touch of the 
familiar objects often serve to remind you, "I must get 
to work on my paper— I must p&y attention— I must not 
waste my time." If you have ever tried to work in un- 
familiar surroundings, you have surely found that sights 
and sounds with which the thoughts of control were not 
associated prove extraordinarily distracting. 

Notice other helps that we give ourselves in paying at- 
tention : We turn as many senses as possible towards the 
idea ; we strain the muscles to get what aid we can in that 
way; certain nei'vous little mannerisms seem to help us, 
such as moving the hands, playing with a pencil, button, 
or something of the sort. 



166 Lessons in Psychology 

VI. Why cannot a young child pay voluntary attention? 
Because, for one thing, he has not the idea of paying atten- 
tion interrelated and interwoven with his mental content. 
He thinks of one thing after another without ever coming 
upon the idea of control. 

VII. Whatever else it is, teaching is the process of stim- 
ulating the rearrangement of secondary material in a mind. 
The teaching is educative in proportion to the wealth of 
the material involved in the rearrangement. As to the 
bearing of attention in the matter, before the age of con- 
trol, only in proportion to the presence in mind of a wealth 
of secondary material of instinctive interest can a child 
pay attention. 

VIII. And as to the process of gaining control, one aim 
in education is to cause the idea of attending, of responsi- 
bility in some form to become dominant. Think of the 
directions one hears parents give : "Be careful ! ", " Shall 
you ever learn to be responsible ! ", " Do not forget ! Attend 
to what you are doing!" and so on— all with the purpose 
of making dominant in trains of associations some thought 
of control. 

One part, then, of the process of training the attention 
must be that of getting the thought of paying attention in 
some form into many trains of association. 

One way to accomplish this result is to give formal, ar- 
bitrary directions like those I have just spoken of. 

Another way is to supply a mental content of concrete 
ideals of people who were responsible, conscientious, self- 
directed in the affairs of life. 

Suppose that, for example, a child's time in the grades 
were spent in living freely through successive periods of 
race history corresponding to his advancement from year 
to year with all the chances of such a program for the 
teaching of language, literature, art. the sciences, number, 



Attention 167 

physical training, and character. The great wealth of 
native, instinctive interests that he brings to make such 
material will cause it to hold his absorbed attention, and his 
life may be filled with an immense treasure, knowledge of 
the best from all human culture, — concrete and effective 
ideals of conduct and responsibility, the highest in all 
literature and history. 

IX. When it comes to the question, How can psychology 
help me now to control my attention? — here as in training 
the memory to a sense of responsibility, control does not 
come by accident. Nor does the process of gaining control 
involve merely superficial mentality, for since attention and 
will are one, the process is as broad as life itself. It is not 
a matter of intermittent, spasmodic, sentimental effort, but 
it is a matter of habit ingrained in the physical make-up, 
the whole personality by unalterable loyalty and faithful- 
ness, in season and out of season, whether the need or re- 
ward is in sight or not, everywhere and always,— unalter- 
able loyalty and faithfulness to one's tasks. It is only such 
life-long training that results in the ability to do what one 
wants to do when he wants to do it, in self-control. 



CHAPTER VIII 

IMAGINATION 

Lesson I 

IMAGING AND IMAGINATION 

Preparation Step.— I. Name ten people you know. 
Think of the face of each as though the person were before 
you, that is, image it vividly. Test some of the images by 
drawing them. 

Image the sounds of voices, peculiar enunciation, pro- 
nunciation, or quality. Image "bird-calls, yawps, hoots, 
barks, cackles, ' ' automobiles ; the music of human voices, 
of instruments. 

Image definite scenes of last summer, yesterday, ten 
years ago, your childhood ; image buildings, the starry 
heavens at night. Do the stars shine in the daytime? 

Hold your mouth open wide while you think the words, 
" I 'm bound to blow bubbles. ' ' 

What did you really think? 

II. Imagine the sort of clothing you would have if you 
could have anything you wanted. Imagine the sort of 
journey you would take if you could go wherever you 
wished ; Imagine, if you had your choice, the sort of home 
you would build and the people you would have in it; 
the sort of person you would like to be in appearance and 
character, the sort of person you will be ten years hence. 

Please do not just smile, but take time to 'imagine and 
image in detail these conditions or others of your own 
choosing. 

III. Recall the scenes and characters you imagined to 
make the last book you read— other books. 



Imagination 169 

IV. Do you imagine the conditions of the Atomic Theory 
and the theory of perception more adequately than you 
did before you began working over your world in their 
terms ? 

V. Before in this lesson you recalled images, imaged 
them, under what circumstances did you image? Where 
did you use imagination? 

Study the variety of sensuous elements in all your 
imagery. To what extent were the thoughts of your ideal 
journey visual, to what motor? 

VI. Remember that the stream of thought at any moment 
is present, the action and interaction of sensations all the 
same in kind though varying in vividness, all secondary, 
sometimes of the outer and sometimes of the inner order. 
Remember that we do not carry about with us mental states 
from our past experience, but that we create anew as we 
need it and in accordance with the law of association sec- 
ondary material that we recognize as answering the purpose 
of yesterday's outer or inner order. 

Presentation Step.— I. In using the terms imaging and 
imagination I have assumed the ordinary understanding of 
them. 

In imaging the faces, scenes, and sounds of the first ques- 
tion, you were trying to reproduce then as completely as 
possible — to have sensations in the same relations, as many 
as possible, and as nearly like the former experience. You 
no doubt imaged vividly also the scenes in your imaginary 
journey, the appearance of your ideal house and garments. 

When we are thinking of the adequate, vivid production 
of sensations in time and space relations, we are looking at 
the stream of thought from the standpoint of imaging. 

II. In imagination, w^hen thinking, for example, of what 
kind of journey you would like, you varied literal repro- 



170 Lessons in Psychology 

duction. You built up from your secondary material struc- 
tures that conformed to an ideal of, say, a trip around the 
world. Part by part you fitted together images, rejecting 
by the law of association what did not and choosing what 
did conform to your standard. 

In imagination our standpoint is that of a synthesis of 
sensations that transcends experience, a combination con- 
structed to conform to a given standard. 

Application Step. — I. Study the source of material 
that you use in imagining; study an act of imagination 
from the standpoint of trains of associations, of memory, 
of apperception, and of attention. 

II. Analyze the process of your imagination in having 
purchased and had made your last new garment; in mak- 
ing the last journey you took on the cars; in writing your 
last letter. Notice how the secondary material that came 
to your mind was tested point by point by a standard, east 
aside if it did not conform and, if it did, was built up into 
the ideal of what was to be done. 

III. Go over some of your lesson-units and study each 
step to see whether you have stimulated imagination all 
that you might and whether you have made the images as 
vivid as you might. 

IV. It is said of Puvis de Chavannes that, when he had 
a wall to decorate, he sat before the space and planned, 
imagined, and imaged his design until he saw it all vividly, 
then only did he begin to work on cartoons. 

Mr. Will H. Low gives a delightful analysis of construc- 
tive imagination in his account of the decoration of the 
ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria. 

The fact that there were on the walls a number of 
lunettes and medallions first determined the size and shape 
of his designs. He then had to decide on subjects. The 



Imagination 171 

purpose of the room, a stately salon for balls and music, 
fixed his choice on human figures rather than on landscape. 
Instead of representing the customary muses, Mr. Low 
lent a modern interest to his work by composing for each 
medallion an ideal female figure to stand for a countiy on 
whose peculiar musical instrument she is performing. 

Of course there was no difficulty in the choice of such an 
instrument for Scotland — it could be no other than the 
bagpipes. Ireland, also, could be pictured only with the 
harp, and Spain with the castanets. When it came to 
Russia, however, the choice was not so easy — it finally fell 
upon a string of sleighbells. And the selection for our 
own country, which was really the most difficult of all, 
w^as happily settled at length by the representation of the 
figure of a young girl holding a scroll in her hands from 
which she is singing. 

Mr. Low's whole sketch of his plan" for studio accommo- 
dation, for the use of canvas instead of the perishable plas- 
ter of the wall, and other details affords an admirable and 
fascinating analysis of the processes of selection and con- 
struction in active artistic imagination. 

V. Notice the use of imagination on the part of all 
writers in construction, style, and figures. 

How much more secondary material, how many more 
trains of association do figures stimulate and rearrange for 
us than just plain literal statements could do. Cable some- 
where tells about a house with "the shutters so tightly 
closed that it hurt your finger-nails to look at them." Paul 
Leicester Ford made one of his men say in answer to the 
question as to what he thought of the heroine's eyes, that 
they were fine — "rather dressy, however, for the daytime." 
Thought and expression, alas, do not always flow with equal 
readiness — how often in writing or speaking is one re- 
minded that he seems to be "wadinu' throush glue"! 



172 Lessons in Psychology 

Compare figures such as these with literal language as to 
force, vividness, and power to call up images that enrich 
meaning. 

VI. When we think of imagination as used only in con- 
struction in art, literature, and music, the view is entirely 
too narrow. 

How far could you have gone in the course of to-day's 
activities without imagination? How could you have 
dressed, eaten your meals, spoken to people or conversed 
with them, read, gone to your work or office, done your 
tasks had you been confined to literal reproduction '? What 
has imagination to do with your appreciation of nature, 
music, art, beauty anywhere"? AVhat with your relation 
to other people, your sympathy with their joy or sorrow, 
with unselfishness, thought fulness, ideals, and character? 

VII. What are the disadvantages of being too literal? 
Do you know a Peter Bell"? 

The lack of imagination makes life dull, prosaic, common- 
place, empty, — hampers one in every way. Because with- 
out imagination one has nothing to say, he cannot converse, 
—he is like Charles Lamb with his "dumb devil;" because 
he is not ingenious, he cannot get out of a difficulty ; being 
a literalist he has no sense of humor — why was the English- 
man always three jokes behind"? Deprived of his heart's 
dearest, he has no resources. 

Lesson II 

CULTIVATING IMAGINATION 

Preparation Step.— I. A certain man with seven small 
brothers and sisters made their home a veritable fairyland 
for them. "The lower part of the garden," a sister writes, 
"Avas a wilderness at night where we would all go with my 
eldest brother (we did everything with him when he was 



Imagination 173 

home), taking rugs and comfortables, and lie on the grass, 
telling stories or rather being told stories, picking out the 
different stars and constellations— watching their motion 
and listening to the crickets, the contrast between their lives 
ending with the frosts and the eternal stars never failing 
to charm and fascinate him. Every sound heard in an 
adjoining yard— every light was accounted for and ex- 
plained in, some way to fit in with the circumstances. 
Witches, ghosts, buga-boos, and caw-caws -were as familiar 
to us as were any of the people we associated with. Ever 
since in all my reading I have come across places and per- 
sons familiar to me all my life from this naming of every 
spot and thing and this figurative way of accounting for 
the most ordinary occurrences from Don Quixote, Arabian 
Nights, Shakespere, Victor Hugo, the Old Testament,— all 
with an added interest because of this. 

' ' We had an open stove where we sat most of the time in 
the winter. When coal was put on we sang to the fire to 
make it burn so the front could come off. We sang all kind 
of nonsense to tunes I have since found out are airs from 
the great operas," and so on— I have pages describing the 
charm and delight of this home. 

"I am aware," continues th* sister's account, "that to 
an outsider much of it must seem the variest nonsense, but 
to us living in that atmosphere from the time we were born, 
it has been a source of great pleasure * * * there 
never were children so happy and I learned more that way 
than I ever did in school * * *, Above all, don't mis- 
judge my brother and think of him as simply a fanciful 
man. He is a smart, taciturn civil engineer, claiming no 
love for children but with an almost extreme compassion 
for the sufferings of a child or animal." 

One does not often find a staid and practical adult with 
so fanciful an imagination. 



17-1 Lessons in Psychology 

II. Your observation will surely have convinced you 
that all our experience is in the terms of mental content. 
Whatever mind may be without its thoughts, we can never 
catch it by itself. Since our sensuous material has always 
a whenness and a whereness, in sleeping and waking we 
are always perceiving. Since we cannot even imagine an 
experience the elements of which we have not before known, 
we are always at the same time remembering. Since we 
are always reaching broader generalizations and higher 
forms of logical relations, we are always thinking and ap- 
perceiving. And since, to a critical observer, each mo- 
ment's experience is at least slightly different from any 
preceding one, imagination is involved in each successive 
present. The degree, nature, and spontaneity of the im- 
agination will thus have to do with the mental content of 
the individual at any given age and moment. 

III. Mr. N., the civil engineer, has no doubt, a vivid and 
facile imagination in the construction of bridges and such 
things, but it was not his professional knowledge that en- 
abled him to make the children's paradise. Nor was this 
paradise made out of nothing. It required mental content 
of a specific kind. 

Suppose that by virtue of a person's imagination in that 
direction he is a gifted actor— these gifts would not secure 
his success as manager of a traction company. 

Only as he has the content and spontaneity can one im- 
agine in the terms of any given content. 

Since there is then no such thing as The Imagination in 
general, it is not possible to cultivate it anj^ more than it is 
to cultivate The Memory ; therefore the subject of this 
lesson ought to be cultivating the Imaginations. 

IV. The imagination of primitive peoples and children 
is regarded as their earnest and honest endeavor to explain 
their world and conditions. Because of their insufficient data 



Imagination 175 

these explanations seem to us fanciful and grotesque. We 
are accustomed to say that children have more imagination 
than adults. Perhaps they have ; certainly their imagina- 
tion is diiferent from that of adults. It is a familiar fact 
indeed that in childhood the predominant mode of thought 
is that of fanciful imagination. 

The tirst appearance of imagination in race and individ- 
ual seems to be in play. "It is often a well marked epoch 
when the young child first learns that it can imagine and 
state things that have no objective counterpart in its life, 
and there is often a weird intoxication when some absurd 
and monstrous statement is made, while the first sensations 
of a deliberate break with truth cause a real excitement 
which is often the birth pang of the imagination. 

"Sometimes their (children's) fancy * * * de- 
velops into a kind of mythopeic faculty * * * all their 
life is imagination. Its control and not its elimination in 
a Gradgrind age of crass facts is what should be sought in 
the interests of the highest truthfulness and of the evolu- 
tion of thought as something above reality * * *" 
(G. S. Hall, "Adolescence.") 

Presentation Step.— I. When one tries to sift down to 
something tangible the different demands made on schools 
"to cultivate the children's imagination," one finds that 
they fall loosely into two classes: 

1. The demand for a training that shall bring about 
greater creative ability, power to originate in the ordinary 
affairs of life. President Eliot once said: "There are two 
kinds of people in the world, — imitators and creators — 
advancement is made by creators. Get to be a creator as 
soon as possible." 

Unless one loves his work there can be little spontaneity 
in creation. If schools, instead of trying to make all chil- 



176 Lessons in Psychology 

dreu just alike, could but discover or cultivate special apti- 
tudes, "detect a scholar in the egg," there would be a 
better^ chance for later originality, inventiveness, and ad- 
vancement. 

Genius has been defined as the preservation into mature 
years of the fecund mental spontaneity of childhood. How 
much have schools to answer for in that we have not more 
geniuses ? 

2. The demand for the preservation in later life of some- 
thing of the poetic imagination of childhood, a matter of 
the aesthetic and emotional interests. 

If it is true that a "poet has died young in the breast of 
the most stolid," surely something might have been done 
by education to cherish the life of this bard ; to arouse a 
deeper and more lasting love of "beauty which is every- 
where a sweetener of life;" to foster romance and idealism 
which, since "one's reach is beyond his grasp," ever elevate 
to a "heaven" that may be his daily life, and to that glow- 
ing spiritually 'which makes in later maturity the prophet 
and the seer who dream dreams and "are not disobedient 
to the heavenly vision." "Without a vision the people 
perish." 

II. But these "imaginations" do not grow and thrive 
by accident and on nothing. They need food and cultiva- 
tion. If schools instead of deadening the instinctive spon- 
taneity of fanciful imagination in childhood should nourish 
and strengthen it on its native food, the stores of anthro- 
pomorphic myth and legend, all later life both the poetic 
and the practical side would gain in charm and power. 

Application Step.— I. What would be the value of 
imaging and imagining more vividly and adequately in 
matters of daily life, say, in clearness of thought and enun- 



Imagination 177 

elation when we speak : in deftness, skill, and speed in what 
we do with our hands ; in definite planning for a busy day 
or lifetime; in reading books, in ingeniousness, inventive- 
ness— (Do people say of you as they did of Sentimental 
Tommy, "He'll find a way?"), in time of danger such as 
fire, drowning, runaway, railway disaster; in kindness, 
thoughtf ulness, and sympathy for those about us ; in the 
positive realization of how good a thing life really is? 

It is said that if a person wishing to learn to skate could 
and should think out, imagine, and image definitely and 
clearly all the muscular co-ordinations involved, he could 
skate at once without practice. 

II. What difference does "acting it out" make in the 
vividness of imaging and imagination? 

It makes a vast difi'erence. When I asked you to think 
with your mouth rigidly open the words, "I'm bound to 
blow bubbles," thus hampered was not what you thought 
something like this combination, "I'ng 'oung 'oo 'ow 
'ugh- 'ugh?" That is, you thought what you would have 
to speak with your mouth open. Now see how much your 
imaging of the labials and Unguals is helped by actually 
putting the lips and tongue in right position. Without 
whispering, move the lips and tongue as though speaking 
and think the words again. You can image all the sounds 
completely. This simple illustration gives us a hint of the 
gain in imaging from "acting it out." 

To a child, acting it out makes all the difference in the 
world, and every advantage should be taken of the spon- 
taneous impulses native to childhood so to act out every- 
thing possible in school and outside, number, nature study, 
art, as well as the life of primitive peoples. This acting 
out in its broad sense is the most important chance that 
comes for muscular co-ordination and consequent brain 
12 



178 Lessons in Psychology 

correlation. It is the golden opportunity, too often wasted, 
for all early muscular and bodily training with its corres- 
ponding brain development and growth of power. 

Play is regarded as the motor habits and spirit of the 
past of the race persisting in the present. "This is why 
the heart of youth goes out into play as into nothing else, 
as if in it man remembered a lost paradise. This is why, 
unlike gymnastics, play has as much soul as body * * * 
play is the ideal type of exercise for the young, most favor- 
able for growth, and most self-regulating in both kind and 
amount * * *. Play at its best is only a school of 
ethics. It gives not only strength but courage and con- 
fidence, tends to simplify life and habits, gives energy, de- 
cision, and promptness to the will * * * brings out 
individuality. 

"The field of play is as wide as life and its varieties 
far outnumber those of industries and occupations in 
the census. 

"The present thought, if true, is only action repressed 
to be ripened to more practical form * * * muscles 
come before mind, Avill before intelligence, and sound ideas 
rest on a motor basis * * *. The roots of play lie 
close to those of creative imagination and idealism." (G. 
S. Hall, "Adolescence.") 

III. "Every healthy boy and girl needs an immense 
deal of play not only with the legs and hands, but with the 
imagination. Childhood ought to be surrounded by a 
broad zone of mystery and wonder. The unimaginative 
childhood makes the drudge in middle life and the cynical 
man in age. The childhood that is rich in imagination 
brings the artistic quality into work and distils so much 
sentiment into the soul that in all the relations of life 
there is underneath its cares, responsibilities and preoccu- 
pations a touch of romance, and life without a romance 



Imagination 179 

is not only prose, but prose that kills. The world needs 
more dreamers. There ought to be more lovers and poets 
among men ; there cannot be too many of them. But lovers 
and poets are not made in middle life ; they are made in 
childhood, and they are made by appeal to the imagina- 
tion." The Outlook. 

IV. There are still people who look askance with a severe 
Puritan fear at the make believe life of a natural child. 
Myth and studies from primitive life are frowned down, 
and a child is taught only the truly true from history, 
which he, if unspoiled, promptly turns into "make be- 
lieve," because "it is his nature to." 

Many parents and teachers, however, are coming to see 
that children's spontaneous fanciful tendencies are ines- 
timably valuable for education and to realize the necessity, 
not only of not suppressing them, but also of taking ad- 
vantage of them, and even of cherishing, feeding, and cul- 
tivating them to the greatest possible extent on the richest 
possible content, a whole wealth of which exists in the 
literature of power. 

"Out of the ignorance of the nature of the child, and 
from the spirit of dogmatism and bigotry, there has come 
the falsehood that says the myth does not contain the 
whole truth, and therefore must be rejected. Who knows 
the whole truth? Shall the child be robbed of that which 
delights its soul and lays the foundation of true religious 
life? No greater mistake can be made in regard to the 
spontaneous activities of the child, for the myth is the 
first fire-mist of character, it contains golden symbols that 
point upward to God and to heaven. The myth is the 
fovindation of faith ' in the future life, the foundation of 
all spiritual growth. The fairies and trolls change, as the 
soul changes, to real folk and real life * * *. ^q 
rough voice and no ignorant soul should ever tell the little 



180 Lessons in Psychology 

child that Santa Clans does not exist, for Santa Clans 
is the foreshadowing of the All-Giver, All-Lover, the one 
who gives because he loves. (Francis W. Parker, "Talks 
on Pedagogics.") 

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS? 



Reprinted on this Christmas morning at the request of many friends 

of The Sun, of Santa Claus, of the little Virginias of 

yesterday and to-day, and of the author 

of the essay, the late F. P. Church. 



We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the 
communication below, expressing at the same time our great grati- 
fication that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of 
The Sun : 

Dear Editor; I am eight years old. 
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. 
Papa says, " If you see it in The Sun it's so." 
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus? 

Virginia O'Hanlon. 
115 West Ninety-fifth Street. 

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected 
by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except 
they see. They think that nothing can be which is not compre- 
hensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they 
be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours 
man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the 
boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable 
of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. 

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as 
love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they 
abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas ! 
how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus ! 
It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would 
be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable 
this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense 



Imx^gination 181 

and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world 
would be extinguished. 

Not believe in Santa Claus? You might as well not believe in 
fairies ! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all 
the chimnej's on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if 
they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? 
Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no 
Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that 
neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing 
on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not 
there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are 
unseen and unseeable in the world. 

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the 
noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which 
not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the 
strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, 
poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and 
picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real ? Ah, 
Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. 

No Santa Claus ! Thank God ! he lives, and he lives forever. A 
thousand years from now, Virginia, nay. ten times ten thousand 
years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of child- 
hood. — Leader in the Nezv York Sun, December ^3, 1906. 

V. Consider yotir school text-books as stimuli to the im- 
agination. Let us start with geography. The pictures and 
maps are usually a great help to the text, and the text is 
often written so as to enable the children to travel quite 
extensively in imagination. Yet a student told me not 
long ago that she was quite well grown before she realized 
that the blue spot on the map of her geography was meant 
for the Lake George where she spent her summers. 

And in history: Compare the ordinary text -book with 
the historical novel as a stimulus to the imagination. Which 
of the two books uses to a greater extent the material of 
your own life to make the people and events of other times? 
AVhieh people are more real, which do j^ou remember more 
vividly? Another student told me that she was quite 



182 Lessons in Psychology 

"through'' American History before she realized that the 
present time was not the first period of peace ever enjoyed 
by our country. As she had learned her liistory, it was a 
succession of wars and battles. 

In literature the edited classic overloaded with notes is 
charged with giving undue attention to details, technical- 
ities, and leaving nothing to a child's imagination or in- 
vention. Too often the eternal spirit of the substance of 
literature is missed in undue attention to philological, 
chronological, and historical dry bones. Carl Holliday in 
an appeal for the cultivation of the imagination in the 
study of literature urges, "Let us, in the name of all that 
is beautiful, sincere, and ennobling study literature for 
its spirit, for its eloquence of beauty, for the reason that 
here is expressed well the thing which every man has felt 
but could not tell * * * (Literature) appeals to the 
soul, it preserves the imagination * * *, 

Richard Le Gallienne once asked a famous scientist for 
a definition of life. " 'Nothing easier,' he gaily replied. 
'Life is a product of solar energy, falling upon the carbon 
compounds, on the outer crust of a particular planet of a 
particular corner of the solar system.' 

" 'And that,' I said, 'really satisfies you as a definition 
of life— of all the wistful wonder of the world.' And as 
I spoke I thought of Moses with mystically shining face 
upon the Mount of the Law, of Ezekiel rapt in his divine 
fancies, of Socrates drinking his cup of hemlock, of Christ's 
agony in the garden, the golden faces of the great of tlie 
world passed as in a dream before me, — soldiers, saints, 
poets, and lovers * * *. 

' ' The carbon compounds ! 

' ' I took down Romeo and Juliet, listened to its passionate 
spherical music, and the carbon compounds have never 
troubled me again. 



Imagination 183 

' ' Love laughs at the carbon compounds, and a great book, 
a noble act, a beautiful face make nonsense of such cheap 
formulae for the mystery of human life." 

"Knowing, then, the value of the imagination in the 
youth of man,— its power to arouse sympathy; its ability 
to bring happiness out of adversity, its force as a creator 
of action, above all, its absolute necessity in the erection of 
ideals, can we believe an education complete that has not 
included a training of this mighty spiritual faculty? 
Surely, it would seen that in the unremitting effort toward 
the uplifting of man there must soon come a new direction 
of energy — a zealous movement from the standpoint of 
his imagination." 



CHAPTER IX '^ 

WILL 

Lesson I 

WILL ACTION 

Preparation Step.— I. How much of your day are you 
quiet, not doing", or planning to do anything? 

II. Everything that is consciously done, every thought 
and impulse, all feelings, emotions, desires, as well as mus- 
cular action, — all are food for observation in the study of 
will action. 

III. Think over some of the things you have done in the 
last hour. I, for example, answered the telephone ; showed 
a maid aboilt some work; sat still and thought out some- 
thing that I wanted to say; sorted and classified some 
material for my work. 

Recall definite acts of yesterday, last week, last year, 
and so on. 

IV. Notice the activities that your muscles carry on for 
you without conscious direction, such as beating the heart, 
breathing, winking. How much conscious direction do 
your muscles require when you walk across the room? 
Walk about and see. When you walk down town there is 
some slight direction of the body by the mind at the street 
corners. Aside from this guidance, do not your feet walk 
for you quite alone most of the time ? 

How much conscious direction is required in talking, 
writing, singing, dressing, eating, conversing, reading, un- 
derstanding, driving an automobile? 

V. How much of your day is made up of acts and plan- 
ning for them? 



Will 185 

VI. In the analysis of will we shall follow what is known 
as the biologic theory, though without in the least involving 
its metaphysical implications. The theory is psycho- 
logically sound, and no other theory is so simple and clear 
and has so great a value in stimulating observation. 

VII. For the moment, then, study the stream of thought 
as though it were made up of the action and interaction of 
sensations, sometimes inner, sometimes outer with an ac- 
companiment of feeling pleasurable or painful, all the 
resultant at each moment of the entire bodily condition, and 
accept as existing the impulse that keeps up a constant and 
continuous purposive activity without consideration of its 
origin. All thought is repressed action, and "In all 
forms of attention * * * ^g ^j^^j selective activity 
going on. Selection always implies a purposive, forward- 
looking type of action, and this is precisely what attention 
is in all its forms. It stands for the fact that the organism 
is teleological in its very constitution. That is, to say, 
the organism contains within itself certain ends to be at- 
tained in the course of development by adjustive activities. 
In part these ends exist imbedded in the physiological 
mechanisms, where' they come to light as reflex, automatic, 
and instinctive acts, sometimes accompanied by conscious- 
ness." (J. R. Angell, "Psychology.") 

Presentation Step.— I. Perhaps the* simplest analysis 
of will action in modern psychology is that of Professor 
James in his "Talks on Psychology." 

"Suppose now you appear before the child with a new 
toy intended as a present for him. No sooner does he see 
the toy than he seeks to snatch it. You slap the hand ; it 
is withdrawn and the child cries. You then hold up the 
toy, smiling and saying, 'Beg for it nicely, — so!' The 
child stops crying, imitates you, receives the toy and 



186 Lessons in Psychology 

crows with pleasure; and that little cycle of training is 
complete. 

' ' Now, if the child had no memory, the process would not 
be educative. No matter how often you came in with, a 
toy, the same series of reactions would fatally occur, each 
called forth by its own impression: see, snatch; slap, cry; 
hear, ask; receive, smile. But, with memory there, the 
child at the very instant of snatching, recalls the rest of 
the earlier experience, thinks of the slap and the frustra- 
tion, recollects the begging and the reward, inhibits the 
snatching impulse, substitutes the 'nice' reaction for 
it, and gets the toy immediately, by eliminating all the 
intermediary steps." 

This little cycle gives the gist of psychologic will theory. 
No matter how complex the act, it may be analyzed to the 
elements here outlined, perception, thought, action, all 
ultimately reducible to native or instinctive reactions. 

II. a) For the sake of studying volition more closely, 
divide each conscious act into its parts. The following 
analysis is not intended as an explanation of acts of will, 
but rather as a form and guide in their observation. 

Notice that there are involved m Professor James' ex- 
ample two mental states of chief importance : 

1. When the child first saw the toy, the idea in his mind 
was that of himself witkout the toy; 

2. The "conscious purpose," or "recognized inclination" 
that struggled to displace it was that of himself as having 
the toy; 

3. Notice, in the third place, his idea or plan of how 
to get it : first, to snatch it, and second, after his will was 
educated, or trained in that particular, to "ask for it 
nicely." 

4. Fourth, the actualization of this plan was an act of 
will. 



Will 187 

b) Now, please go over several of your own acts in the 
same way. I^ for example, just answered the telephone : 
AVhen I first heard the bell^ 

1. The idea actually in my mind in reference to the act 
in question was that of myself as not having answered 
the bell; 

2. The "conscious purpose" of myself as having an- 
swered the bell at once struggled towards actualization; 

3. I planned quickly in the terms of secondary muscu- 
lar and visual sensations 1) to rise, m) to turn towards the 
door, n) pass through the hall, o) to go down stairs, p) 
to stand before the telephone, q) to take the receiver and 

speak ; 

4. In the terms of perception, each step of the above 
series became in turn a part of the outer order until the 
idea of myself as having answered the telephone was 
actualized. 

c ) Another case : I sat still and planned a lesson : When 
in thinking over the work of the day the idea of my class 
came, 

1. The thought was of myself as not having planned my 
lesson ; 

2. The conscious purpose of myself as having planned 
the lesson at once became impulsive ; 

3. In my plans for the actualization of this idea 1) I 
thought, I'll sit down and work it out, m) I'll think what 
we did yesterday, n) and think out a list in order for 
to-day. 

4. Each step of this plan was carried out until the idea 
of myself as having outlined the lesson was actualized. 

d) And just one more: Last summer I took a long 
journey. I first decided at Easter to go. Then, 

1. The idea in my mind in reference to this volition was 
that of myself as not having spent the summer in travel ; 



188 Lessons in Psychology 

2. The idea that then became impulsive was that of my- 
self as having spent the summer in travel ; 

3. The tieetiug plans that at that moment flashed through 
my mind were vastly modified and elaborated in the months 
that followed. I can pick them out quite definitely, how- 
ever, step by step ; 

4. Each step was carried out approximately as planned, 
and by autumn the idea of myself as having taken the long 
journey was actualized. 

In these cases and others the actualization of a conscious 
purpose is an act of wnll. 

Application Step.— I. In Professor James' analysis the 
child's instincts, or primitive impulses to snatch the toy, 
to avoid hurt, and to please some one were made over into 
a reasonable act. 

II. j\Iake out a list of instincts in children that become 
constituents in volition, such as the impulses to creep, to 
walk, to grasp, to make movements in self-defence, to carry 
objects to the mouth, to eat, to construct, to imagine, to 
make sounds, to play, to use the senses, to attract atten- 
tion, to imitate, to co-operate, to show off, to collect, to 
fight, to run away. The instincts of curiosity, affection, 
and its opposites, fears, aggressiveness, freedom, adventure, 
diffidence, egotism, selfishness, adornment, cruelty, gregar- 
iousness, and hundreds more, 

]Man having had a longer chance at racial development 
than any other animal, has a greater number of instincts, 
consequentiy his volitional life is correspondingly complex. 

All impulses become co-ordinated into muscular acts 
where control and skill make a profound difference in cap- 
ability and strength of volition. 

TIT. "Although we readily recognize and admit the 
volitidiud processes in childhood are, in their origin, de- 



Will 189 

pendent upon impulses, it is not so obvious that adult con- 
duct is in the same manner bound up with impulse. Nev- 
ertheless, this is the fact * * *. Indeed, the statement 
is often made that the development of volition is neither 
more nor less than a process of reducing our impulses to 
order, and that a mature character is simply one in which 
the impulses are thus subordinated to some systematised 
principles. Instead, therefore, of the conception that a 
developed will or character is one in which all primitive 
impulses have been extirpated or repressed, we have the 
conception of these impidses as continuously operative, hut 
operative in a rational and coherent ivay, rather than in 
the chaotic fashion characterizing childhood and infancy. 
This view is unquestionably correct in its general impli- 
cations * * *." ("Psychology," James Rowland 
Angell.) 

The italics are mine. "The development of volition is 
* * * a process of reducing our impulses to order." 
To say that only rational acts are volitional sounds arbi- 
trary, yet it seems to describe the case. To a reasonable 
being an idea becomes impulsive when it is seen to be the 
reasonable, right, wise, noble, or good thing to be done. 

IV. But, you will ask, what about the unreasonable, the 
foolish and wrong things we do, are they not, acts of will? 

To answer the question, study these acts concretely. Is 
not each done as the result of a hasty, thoughtless impulse, 
or of ignorance, or because you are the slave of a bad 
habit? All these acts are far from the actualization of 
reasonable conscious purposes, therefore they are not 
volitional but they are done because of the absence of 
volition. 

Yet even these acts are to be reckoned with in the study 
of will since they are parts of the stream of thought that 
influence later plans and volitions. 



190 Lessons in Psychology 

V. "Kationality — morality— freedom— firmness of char- 
acter, are apprehensions of the same notion from different 
sides. He who acts rationally acts morally ; for the con- 
tent of reason is the demands of the moral law; he is also 
free in his action, because he determines himself, not in 
accordance with the momentary state of his consciousness, 
which is inclined to favor now this, now that desire, but 
according to the unchanging demands of his rational in- 
sight * * *. By thus freeing his volition from all 
accidental vacillations, he acts consistently; i.e. as having 
character." ("Empirical Psychology," G. A. Lindner.) 



Lesson II 

FEELINGS 

Preparation Step.— I. Kindly make the following ex- 
periment: Read something thrilling, such as one of Poc's 
tales of horror and mystery or Mrs. Shelley's "Frankin- 
stein. ' ' As you read, notice the changes in the circulation 
of the blood as shown by your pulse and heart beats; 
changes in the color of your face ; in the size of the pupils 
of your eyes ; in breathing, temperature, and digestion ; in 
the secretion of sweat and saliva ; in muscles. 

II. Observe the bodily accompaniments of fear: They 
are pallor and trembling, spasm of the heart, effects on the 
abdominal viscera, goose-flesh on the skin, cold sweat, 
bristling of the hair, dryness of the mouth, choking, par- 
alysis of the voice or hoarse screaming, tendency to flight, 
sensations of weakness. 

The bodily accompaniments of pleasure are general ex- 
pansiveness, sparkling eyes, flushing face, bodily warmth, 
deep breathing, smiling, rounded face, and other external 
movements. 



Will 191 

III. Recall instances from history, fiction, and poetry of 
primitive rage, love, hate, of passionate devotion to a 
cause, an ideal, the accomplishment of a purpose. Com- 
pare your own emotions with these as to strength and 
spontaneity; your own now with those you had in child- 
hood. 

Wherein lay the power of Paul, Luther, Pestalozzi, Jean 
d'Arc, King Arthur, Keats? 

IV. To the critical observer of the growth of a child 
the emotional life more than any other phase of mentality 
proclaims the great diversity of personalities in the same 
individual as development progresses, often in jerks and 
leaps, through the different strata of racial life. In these 
multiplex personalities "the voices of extinct generations, 
sometimes still and small, sometimes strident and shrill" 
reverberate until increasing mental unity brings relative 
maturity. Thus, not only, is the intellectual and volitional 
life made out of instincts, but also the emotional life. 

V. In the first lesson only completed acts were studied. 
Suppose, now, that in some way I had been hindered from 
answering the telephone, or that I had been prevented from 
going abroad : how should I have felt about it "I My feel- 
ing would have been one of disappointment in both cases — 
of great disappointment in the second. But I w^as not 
hindered in either act, and I enjoyed actualization in both. 

VI. Think over again the many little acts that have 
made your day. Suppose, instead of having been able to 
do each one in a capable and efficient manner, you had been 
hindered and thwarted at every turn, should you have had 
a happy day? 

On the other hand, everything went as you had planned, 
and you feel pleased and satisfied. Some of the acts, like 
answering the telephone, seem trivial — there was no great 
pleasure accompanying the realization here of the con- 



192 Lessons in Psychology 

scious purpose. Still, if one imagines a hindrance to 
actualization, there is discernible a distinct feeling of 
annoyance. 

All feeling seems to be, not absolute, but relative. Yet 
one can realize that a feeling is relatively pleasurable some- 
times only by supposing the opposite condition, a hin- 
drance to actualization, when the disappointment resulting 
shows that actualization was relatively pleasurable. 

VII. Make out a list of feelings that you have exper- 
ienced. Notice that, though your list contains many dif- 
ferent names, all the feelings may be classified as either 
pleasurable or painful. Classify them in these two 
divisions. 

VIII. How definitely can you plan and act under strong 
emotions? How accurate a description can you give of 
such an event as, say, your wedding, the burning of your 
home? What effect on one's sanity and self-control does 
great joy or sorrow have? 

Presentation Step. — I. Any discriminated result in 
mind of a change in the cebrebral terminals of the sensory 
nerves is a sensation. It has a presentative element — is 
red or smooth or musical or sour or loud. Feeling, on the 
other hand, has no content, it is simply the pleasure or pain 
that goes along with, or attends mental action. 

The accompaniment of mental action then is feeling, 
painful when there is a hindrance, an obstruction, or 
thwarting, — pleasurable when there is a furtherance of 
interests or intentions. 

II. As to the bodily conditions from which feelings 
result : 

Sensations, as those of color, are the result of change 
in a particular part of the cerebral cortex. The geography 
of the brain has been tentatively mapped out to quite a 



Will 193 

degree for areas whose stimulus results in sensations and 
muscular action. And even though they have no definite 
content and brain localization, feelings, as well as sensa- 
tions, are thought to be results of bodily condition. Thus 
we are pleased because we smile, expand the muscles gen- 
erally; because we weep, actually or incipiently, we are 
sad. "Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no 
ebullition in the chest, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse 
to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm 
breathing, and a placid face? The present writer for one, 
certainly cannot. The rage is as completely evaporated as 
the sensation of its so-called manifestations, and the only 
thing that can possibly be supposed to take its place is 
some cold-blooded and dispassionate judicial sentence, con- 
fined entirely to the intellectual realm, to the effect that 
a certain person or persons merit chastisement for their 
sins,* * *. A purely disembodied human emotion is 
a nonentity." (W. James, "Psychology.") 

"The bodily changes follow directly the perception of 
the exciting fact, and * * * our feeling of the same 
changes as they occur is the emotion." (Ibid.) 

This peculiar accompaniment then of mental action, 
feeling, is a mental resultant (like sensations, but, unlike 
them undiscriminated) of all elements of the bodily con- 
dition. 

III. There is always an emotional accompaniment in the 
stream of thought, and its nature depends on the mental 
content that is passing through the mind. Where the con- 
tent is relatively simple and primitive the feelings are in- 
stinctive and generic (The mental content of ideas of dan- 
ger, a hindrance to self-preservation, is accompanied by 
the feeling of fear). 

Where, on the other hand, the stream of thought is in- 
formed, reasonable, sane, the emotions are relatively com- 
13 



194 Lessons in Psychology 

plex. (As feelings of enjoyment of one's work, the accom- 
paniment of a furtherance of one's ideas of well-being.) 
IV. Study many concrete feelings both as the accom- 
paniment of hindrance and furtherance of volitions and at 
the same time the resultant of the general bodily condition. 

Application Step.— I. If one thinks away all the bodily 
conditions of fear, there is no fear left. Is there not a 
hint here for the positive cultivation of bravery, good 
nature, kindliness, optimism, and other virtues through 
the persistent assumption of their bodily conditions and 
attitudes ? 

Take the case of bravery: the presence of an emotion is 
so noticeably upsetting to reasonable control that it, emo- 
tion, is even explained by Dewey and Angell as "the 
temporary suspension of voluntary control in the forward 
movement of consciousness." If, then in the first con- 
sciousness that one 's house is afire, instead of ' ' losing one 's 
head," he could "keep his wits about him," or could 
"collect himself" by controlling the bodily manifestations, 
while he reasons what to do, mightn't the timid really 
become quite brave f There seems, indeed, to be something 
in "putting on a bold front" and "whistling to keep your 
courage up." 

Psychologists say that policemen, firemen, and soldiers 
realize dangerous and terrifying conditions, yet because 
they apprehend them in a cold-blooded and self-controlled 
way, they do not feel fear. 

II. If only reasonable acts are volitional and if the 
furtherance of these is always pleasurable, then is not 
duty always pleasurable? This question sounds, perhaps, 
like cant, yet it really involves a profound scientific truth, 
namely, that reasonable acts are always ultimately pleas- 
urable. Why not make the most of the truth, then ? One 



Will 195 

misses so much through overestimation of what one has 
done, through loving to be a martyr and miserable ! Why 
not realize life as the abounding joy that it is? 

Stevenson said, "I know what pleasure is, for I have 
done good work." 

"Duty * * * is not adequately conceived and felt 
if it is not pleasure." (G. S. Hall.) 

III. But even in the most healthy and reasonably con- 
trolled individuals, there appear sometimes the native in- 
stinctive impulses, feelings that in spite of high ideals are 
reversions to the blind, unreasoning joys and sorrows of 
primitive life. There are cases in which these feelings are 
not weakening, but, in general, "character forming is the 
process of reducing impulses to order. ' ' 

In application of the last statement, it is interesting to 
note the following definition of immoral literature given by 
Mary Wood- Allen : ' ' Immoral . literature is any litera- 
ture which depicts love as a feverish, irresponsible passion, 
that comes we know not whence, and carries us we know not 
whither, but that must be followed wherever it leads." 
And from G. S. Hall, "In six leading contemporary alien- 
ists I jSnd the following definitions of love as described in 
novels: Emotive delusion, fixed idea, rudimentary par- 
anoia, psychic neurasthenia, psychic emotive obsession and 
episodic symptoms of hereditary degeneracy." 

IV. Why should one have strong feelings? Have you 
strong interests? What are they? Test each ruthlessly 
by the amount of money, time, and effort you spend on it. 

Education has been defined as a process of starting in- 
terests. This aim is certainly a good "working" one for 
teachers, for whatever education is, it is not finished at 
the end of school-life. 

And yet what in general has been the effect of education, 
cultivation on strength of emotions? "In our day and 



196 Lessons in Psychology 

civilization" writes Dr. Hall, "the hot life of feeling is 
remote and decadent * * *. The very word passion is 
becoming obsolete in psychological literature * * *, 
The life of feeling has its prime in youth, and we are pre- 
maturely old and too often servile in heart * * *. Our 
sensibilities are refined, but our perspective is narrow 
* * * our very philosophy as well as our religion * * * 
looks with some contempt upon enthusiasm. Our senti- 
ments are oversubtilized and sophisticated and reduced to 
puny reactions to music and appreciation of art that are 
nine parts criticism and one part appreciation. What we 
have felt is second-hand, bookish, shop-worn, and the heart 
is parched and bankrupt. ' ' 

But in the souls of children and adolescents we are ever 
rejuvenated emotionally. "Their hearts are young, fresh, 
and in the golden age. There is color in their souls, bril- 
liant, livid, loud. They are still the light and hope of the 
world." 

Lesson III 

DESIRES 

Preparation Step.— I. Why do we not all have the same 
desires ? 

What one desires in each case is the purpose in an act of 
will, the impulsive mental state. The question then comes 
back to the one considered from the standpoint of Apper- 
ception, under what circumstances could two persons have 
the same thought? It is because each one's present stream 
of thought is made by the rearrangement of his secondary 
experience, by his past, that no two persons can have just 
the same desires. See how important memory is in the 
matter. 

II. What makes a mental state impulsive? 



Will 197 

A mental state becomes impulsive as soon as it is seen 
to be the reasonable, right thing to do. Notice, in passing, 
how acute and subtle one's consciousness, or conscience, 
comes by experience to be in the distinction between rea- 
sonable and foolish things, between right and wrong. 

III. AYhat have you desired to do recently ? I desired to 
go to a committee meeting this morning; to make some 
visits this afternoon ; to read a newspaper to-night ; to hear 
a person sing to-morrow, and many other things. 

Did you ever when you were a child, desire to reach 
the moon ? Think over other desires that you have had, 
those that have come to you in day-dreams, such as to be 
rich, happy, beloved, beautiful, wise, clever, famous, good, 
well, to rest, to be frivolous. What are you doing to make 
these desires come true? 

Notice that some of your desires are realized at once, 
some last a long, long time. 

IV. Surely no one enjoys a visit to the dentist's chair, 
3^et you go there even when you are not actually suffering 
from toothache if you know that you should go. That is, 
brought up as you have been, you could not stay away with 
any ultimate comfort. 

Think of other cases where you do not enjoy the process 
of actualization in itself, yet where without actualization 
there would be no real satisfaction. 

V. The analysis here attempted is not intended as an 
explanation of desire,— it is hoped only that the classifica- 
tion of parts outlined will stimulate to more constant ob- 
servation of the stream of thought from the standpoints 
of desire, will, and feeling. 

Presentation Step. — I. The analysis of my desire to 
attend a committee meeting this morning shows it to have 



198 Lessons in Psychology 

been composed of these parts: When four days ago I re- 
ceived a notice of the meeting. 

1) The idea in my mind in reference to the act was that 
of myself as not having attended the meeting this morning ; 

2) The idea. of myself as having attended the meeting 
became impulsive; 

3) My plans at that time were a) fleeting thoughts of 
how I should place the notice in sight on my table so as 
not to forget it; b) thoughts of arranging my work for 
to-day so as to flnish it by eleven o'clock; c) thoughts of 
myself as walking to the meeting; 

4) Before I carried out my plans and finally attended 
the meeting, that is, while I desired to go, my feeling was 
relatively painful ; 

5) If two days ago I had become convinced that I could 
not go to the meeting because of extra work, though much 
disappointed, I should have ceased all effort toward going. 
If, again, my belief in my ability to go had been restored, 
I should have continued to make an effort to go. When I 
believed the end to be unattainable, I should still have had 
a "vain wish" to go, as business of importance to me was 
to be transacted. 

II. The general condition of struggle, preceding volition 
and including, 

1. The idea in consciousness of myself in reference to 
that act, 

2. The impulsive idea, 

3. The plans, 

4. The relatively painful feeling, and 

5. The belief in the attainability of the end,— the general 
condition of struggle including all these makes desire. 

III. Accustom yourself to the constant observation and 
analysis of concrete desires. 



Will 199 

Application Step.— I. According to the definition given, 
the term desire includes both more and less of our exper- 
ience than is commonly included in it. It includes more in 
that what precedes all the little trivial acts of will as well 
as the important ones must be desire. Our days seem to 
be made up of one conscious actualization after another, 
so that we have many desires every day. 

The term desire includes less than is ordinarily thought 
in another sense. Do you ever desire to do what is not rea- 
sonable, wise, or right? At first thought it seems as 
though you do, yet when you have watched yourself for 
awhile, I think you will have to agree that desire must be 
limited to the striving for reasonable, right things, alone. 
The foolish or wrong impulses come only when one does 
not give the right desires a chance. These impulses come 
because we are the slave of a habit, a "lower motive," or 
are ignorant. 

This distinction, that we desire to do only the right 
thing, follows from the psychological idea of volition, 
"the process of reducing our impulses to order." The 
craving unrest of desire is always for what will give one 
pleasurable satisfaction ultimately, and, to a reasonable 
and sane person no matter how painful the process may 
be, only the actualization of what is reasonable and sane 
will ever do so. The ethical implications and applications 
of such a conception for purposes of actual living are 
tremendous. 

Thus the meaning of the term desire in connection with 
volition is seen to be not so broad as its ordinary use would 
justify. 

II. Did you ever desire to go to the moon? I know a 
child who did, who used actually to plan how she would 
make the journey. When, as she grew older, she realized 



200 Lessons in Psychology 

that the end in her desire was unattainable, she still had 
left a "vain wish," she often dwelt upon how nice it 
would be to go, but all effort to reach the moon ceased. 

Thus, when one's belief in the attainability of an end is 
destroyed, there may remain a mere "vain wish," but 
desire is ended. The test of desire is always the struggle, 
the effort, what one does to further actualization. 

Perhaps, however, "vain wishes" still have a place— they 
are "the stuff that dreams are made of," and what should 
we be without dreams? To be sure their pleasures are not 
very keen, "they who do but shadows kiss" have "but a 
shadow's bliss." Yet, how often have the "vain wishes" 
proved profoundly suggestive in plans and execution as 
well as in ideals themselves ! 

One would not, however, hold up as a model the type of 
character that lives habitually in "vain wishes," in a gen- 
eral sentimentality, ineffectiveness, any more than one 
would admire him who has the "weeping-over-spilt-milk" 
attitude,— both types incapable of any vigorous accom- 
plishment. "In willing we work, but wishes play with us." 

III. Why does one like to be thought to have strong 
desires? What difference would it make if people had a 
greater number of desires than they have? What differ- 
ence, if one thought, imagined, and imaged more vividly 
and definitely in connection with ideals, even the most 
trivial, and plans for their realization? 

jy "* * * desire occupies an extremely fundamen- 
tal position in the development of will and the formation 
of character. In the first place, the actual psychical con- 
dition presented by desire afi^ords us a striking instance 
of the great salient features of the mind with which all our 
previous study has been concerned. In it we find elaborate 
thought processes at work; we find conspicuous affective 



Will 201 

factors and we see the whole onward moving conative char- 
acter of consciousness brought clearly to light. Moreover, 
it discloses to us an epitome of the character at any given 
moment." (J. R. Angell, "Psychology.") 

V. Some observation is necessary to enable one to realize 
the force of belief in connection with desires and volition. 
Professor Abby Leach in an address before the Association 
of Collegiate Alumnae recently showed strikingly the dif- 
ference between knowledge that does not bring conviction 
and that which does in effectiveness. She said: 

"We have seen in the Japanese-Russian war a heroism 
in answer to the call of duty that has never been surpassed 
in all history. We have seen * * * the words 'It is 
sweet to die for one's country' suddenly transformed from 
mere fine phraseology into the animating principle of men's 
lives * * *^ We have seen patient thought applied to 
every detail, however small, and we have seen on a scale 
never seen before, human foresight and effort so directed 
by the keenest intelligence that the incalculable element of 
chance hardly counted in the issue. What was the secret 
of it all 1 Do we need to ask ? Is it not because the Jap- 
anese believe what they profess ? believe so profoundly that 
they do the thing? Wounds are often dangerous on the 
battlefield because some shred of soiled clothing is carried 
to the wound with the bullet, and so — a bath and clean 
clothing before the battle. Did we not know this in the 
Cuban war as well as they? Did we do it? Knowledge 
transmuted into belief, that is a force that is irresistible 
and that to my thinking is what the Japanese have and we 
lack. They are trained so that they believe what they 
learn, they live what they believe. In them we see the 
power of ideals, for the nation has grown great because of 
its profound conviction of some of the fundamental truths 
of life. 



202 Lessons in Psychology 

"No matter how sound the principles taught, how correct 
the moral standards, how profound the truths, education 
has failed of its purpose unless it can make these part and 
parcel of the life, ineradicable beliefs that no influence 
from without or temptation from within can move in the 
slightest, beliefs that with the coming and going of the 
days and the chances and changes of life but take the 
deeper root, but gain in strength and beauty. For educa- 
tion is not the learning of tables of weights and measures 
but the study of values and standards and such complete 
acceptance of these that the life is atfected thereby." 

VI. President Butler recently emphasized the impor- 
[tance of careful attention on the part of schools to the 
instillation of right principles: 

"Put bluntly, the situation which confronts Americans 
to-day is due to lack of moral principle. New statutes 
may be needed, but statutes will not put moral principle 
where it does not exist. The greed for gain and the greed 
for power have blinded men to the time-old distinction 
between right and wrong. Both among business men and 
at the bar are to be found advisers, counted shrewd and 
successful, who have substituted the penal code for the 
moral law as the standard of conduct. Right and wrong 
have given way to the subtler distinction between legal, not- 
illegal and illegal, or better, perhaps, between honest, law- 
honest and dishonest." 

Dr. G. S. Hall, also, points out the difference between 
mere superficial, formal knowing and doing: 

<«* * * ^jjg intellect may be so trained as to enfeeble 
and dissipate the will, and it is because this is so widely 
seen and felt that it has come to be one of the chief en- 
deavors of educational thought to-day to go deeper and 
to moralize as well as to mentalize children and to develop 
will as a chief factor of character." 



N 



Will 203 

And President Briggs in "Routine and Ideals" makes 
clear the truth that life is an educational process ; its end is 
not to present the greatest number of ideals to a man, but to 
pass the greatest number of ideals into him; to make his 
visions authoritative in his life by transmuting his ideals 
from the realm of dreams into the realm of character. 



Lesson IV 

CHARACTER 

Preparation Step.— I. A mother recently told me of 
her little son aged eight to whom she had related stories of 
the training of a page as set forth in the tales of chivalry. 
The child immediately became her page and asked often 
about what pages did. AVhere formerly she had to say, 
"Elton, please open the door for me," she now finds that 
Elton runs to open the door when he sees her rise to leave 
the room. Where he formerly needed to be requested not 
to slam the door, now he remembers to close it gently with- 
out such reminder. And she is finding that the ideal makes 
him not only much more positive in his thoughtfulness and 
foresight for her and his sister, more gentle in his ways 
about the home, but also more conscientious and responsible 
in his tasks in school. 

A certain "fourth grade had shown a degree of restive- 
ness which was at once despair for the practice teachers 
and interesting study for the teacher of psychology 
* * *. Influence after influence was tried with very 
little result. At last it was determined to ask a new 
teacher * * * to tell the children the Arthurian 
stories, and let them live the Arthurian life as far as pos- 
sible * * *. Very soon it was found that all the 
Arthurian literature in the libraries * * * ^^gg qq^- 



204 Lessons in Psychology 

sufficient to meet the demands of the children and practice 
teachers. Another large library was called upon and gen- 
erously lent its resources. A jousting-place appeared on 
the playground, and was rarely without contending knights 
in the hours given to play. Helmets, shields, spears, swords, 
lances, and Arthurian costumes for both sexes were soon 
in process of manufacture not only in the shop and the 
schoolroom, but in the homes of the children. Each boy in 
the grade assumed the name of one of Arthur's knights, 
and agreed to try to imitate his life and to gain his char- 
acter. Each girl became a lady of Arthur's court and was 
shortly acting well her part. No observer could doubt the 
value of the result. A noisy and restless school became 
orderly and obedient. Courtesy took the place of self- 
assertion on the playground, and evidence was obtained 
that many of the children were carrying the new spirit into 
the home conduct. 'That is unknightly' became a strong 
deterrent ; and * * * the transformation was lasting. " 
("The Elementary School Teacher," Vol. VI, No. 3, 
p. 137.) 

In a certain school where the children lived through dif- 
ferent race periods, a visitor to the Roman room noticed 
on the board the words, "Power through law," the ethical 
core of study for the grade. The very atmosphere of the 
room seemed full of the stern integrity and self-control for 
which the word Roman stands to us. And both in this 
room and in the Greek one before it, the children seemed 
really to have lived through something of the "Glory 
that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." 

' ' The old traveler, Rafinesque, tells us that, when he was 
a boy he read the voyages of Captain Cook and Pallas and 
Le Vaillant, and his soul was fired with the desire to be a 
great traveler like them. 'And so I became such,' he adds 
shortly." 



Will 205 

Lincoln after reading Weems' "Life of Washington" de- 
clared, "I do not always intend to delve, grub, shock corn, 
split rails^ ajid the like." 

"Nurture your minds with gTeat thoughts. To believe 
in the heroic makes heroes. ' ' Inspire a child with an ideal 
and he will take care of his own education, advancement 
in life, and character. 

II. Though at first all mental states are instinctively 
impulsive, education soon begins to effect the inhibition of 
undesirable impulses and the substitution of ideas of wise 
action. Thus, in the analysis of acts of will, one finds es\fih 
time one purpose, or end that is impulsive, that is seeking 
actualization. It is in every case the idea of what is the 
expedient, wise, reasonable, right thing to be done, a re- 
sultant of individual experience as well as hereditary and 
racial influences. 

What effect would ignorance of factors involved in an 
act have on the definiteness and adequacy of this ideal 
purpose! When the little chap of the first instance did 
not know about the duties of a page, he did not have in 
many trains of association the ideal purposes of gentle 
manners and conscientiousness. Even though he had been 
told the generalizations, "Be courteous, do well in school," 
he did not really know them, he did not have a "working 
idea" of them as he did when he lived freely and com- 
pletely the life of a page. 

Study most carefully the relation in your own exper- 
ience between knowing and doing. There are those w^ho go 
even so far as to say that "adequate knowing is doing." 

III. What difference does your condition of health make 
in your alertness, effectiveness, and capability"? In your 
relations to other people in helpfulness? The final esti- 
mate of character seems to be a matter of contacts with 
other people. 



206 Lessons in Psychology 

Think back over your own experience to discover the dif- 
ference that physical movement and muscular co-ordina- 
tion have made in mental and volitional skill, confidence, 
and efficiency. Science says that through infancy and 
childhood, at least, the development of the two factors, 
physical and mental, go hand in hand. 

It is said of young Americans that most of them have 
not even a rudimentary conscience in regard to care of 
the health, bodily development, and intelligent physical 
training. Another factor of importance in the estimate of 
the value of a life is the length of its period of usefulness. 

In Germany military training is developing a nation of 
men of strong and vigorous physique; agile, plastic, and 
alert ; enured to Spartan simplicity of life and to hard- 
ships; trained to obedience and inoculated with the sol- 
dier's virtue of loyalty and self-sacrifice. Yet one would 
not for a moment desire conscription and universal military 
training for American youth. One would desire, however, 
a more serious realization of the vast importance of physi- 
cal training to secure health, vigor, and will potential. 

"The great increase of city and sedentary life has been 
far too sudden for the human body— which was developed 
by hunting, war, agriculture, and the manifold industries 
now given over to steam and machinery— to adapt itself 
healthfully or naturally to its new environment * * * 
reflect what movements we habitually make each day, and 
realize how disproportionately our activities are distributed 
compared with the size or importance of the muscles, and 
how greatly modern specialization of work has deformed 
ovir bodies. The muscles that move the scribbling pen are 
an insignificant fraction of those in the whole body, and 
those that wag the tongue and adjust the larynx are also 
comparatively few and small * * * it is disastrous to 
concentrate education upon them too exclusively or too 



Will 207 

early in life." (G. S. Hall, "Moral Education and Will 
Training.") 

Presentation Step.— There are two factors to be 
reckoned with in considering the science of character; one 
is the presence of effective ideals, the other, such a phy- 
sical condition and development as make their actualization 
possible. 

I. In regard to ideals: 

The individual at each moment, the sum of all his past, 
is his character. If character were something uninfluenced 
by thought and experience or something separate from the 
individual, training would not be possible. But action is 
at least sometimes influenced by knowledge, and thus the 
character is educable. 

If at a given time the individual 's act is reasonable, com- 
pletely adapted to his condition and time, then his is to 
that extent a good character. In proportion as the sum 
of his acts is invariably reasonable, he may be said to be 
educated, morally trained. 

Reasonable will acts, then, are good character. Since 
the will at each moment is not something wholly indepen- 
dent of everything else, but is one aspect of the stream of 
thought at that time, the thoughts are an important con- 
sideration. If .the thoughts are of the right kind, acts are 
more likely to be so, but if they are not, action will be 
faulty. 

But a completely fashioned will is not something that 
comes by accident. The problem for teachers then is how 
to furnish a child in school with a mental content by which 
he will be educated, morally trained. 

As a child is trained at present by the public schools, his 
stream of thought is almost empty of ideas that give a posi- 
tive quality to his acts. The study of children would seem 



208 Lessons in Psychology 

to indicate that their wrong-doing is largely due to their 
ignorance as well as to lack of tact on the part of parents 
and teachers. Their native impulses, moreover, are neg- 
lected or perverted instead of made into motives reasonable 
for their years. The formal maxims that a child has been 
given, like. Do not lie. Always do right, since psycholog- 
ically he is incapable of any wide application of general- 
izations, do not always come when they are needed to save 
him from wrong-doing. If then instead of general and 
haphazard directions he could be given an adequate knowl- 
edge of a large number of concrete, intelligible ideals of 
conduct suited to his years, if his stream of thought could 
be filled with a wealth of motive forming material, the 
spontaneous product of his instincts he would come much 
nearer to being the positive, self-directed, responsible hu- 
man being that his age, not an adult 's but a child 's, requires. 
II. As to the relation of muscular training to will, 
"Muscles are in a most intimate and peculiar sense 
the organs of the will. They have built all roads, 
cities and machines in the world, written all the books, 
spoken all the words, and, in fact, done everything that 
man has accomplished with matter. If they are unde- 
veloped or grow relaxed and flabby, the dreadful chasm 
between good intentions and their executions is liable to 
appear and widen. Character might be in a sense defined 
as a plexus of motor habits. To call conduct three-fourths 
of life, with Matthew Arnold; to describe man as one-third 
intellect and two-thirds will, with Schopenhauer; to urge 
that man is what he does or that he is the sum of his move- 
ments, with F. N. Robertson; that character is simply 
muscle habits, with Maudsley; that the age of art is now 
slowly superseding the age of science, and that the artist 
will drive out the professor ; that history is conscious-willed 
movements; to hold that most thought involves change of 



Will 209 

muscle tension as more or less integral to it — all this shows 
how we have modified the antique Ciceronian conception 
vivere est cogitari to vivere est velle, and gives us a new 
sense of the importance of muscular development." (A. 
W. Trettien in American Education.) 

"The trouble is that few realize what physical vigor is 
in man or woman, or Itoiv dangerously near weakness often 
is to ivickedness, how impossible healthful energy of will 
is without strong muscles which are its organ, or how en- 
durance and self-control, no less than great achievement, 
depend on muscle-habits. Both in Germany and Greece 
a golden age of letters was preceded, by about a generation, 
by a golden age of national gymnastic enthusiasm which 
constitutes, especially in the former country, one of the 
most unique and suggestive chapters in the history of 
pedagogy. Symmetry and grace, hardihood and courage, 
the power to do everything that the human body can do 
with and without all conceivable apparatus, instruments 
and even tools, are culture ideals that in Greece, Rome and 
Germany respectively have influenced, as they might again 
influence, young men as intellectual ideals never can do 
save in a select few * * *. Even will-training does 
not reach its end till it leads the young up to taking an 
intelligent, serious and life-long interest in their own phy- 
sical culture and development." (G. S. Hall, "Pedagogical 
Seminary," Vol. II, 1892.) 

Application Step. — I. Many schools in Germany and an 
increasingly large number in this country are taking ad- 
vantage for character training of the child's native impulses 
by causing him to live through in the grades the best in 
successive periods of race development. For genetic psy- 
chology teaches that the individual recapitulates the per- 
iods of race development, and its ideal has never been better 
14 



210 Lessons in Psychology 

formulated than in Goethe's words, "The youth must al- 
ways begin anew and as an individual traverse the epochs 
of the world's culture * * *, One could be genuinely 
aesthetic-didactic if he could pass with his pupils before 
all that is worth feeling, or if he could bring it before them 
exactly at the moment in which it culminates and when 
they are most highly sensitive." And, "Sin," says Dr. 
Balliet, "in all its forms is but little else than an arrest of 
ancestral instincts on their primitive plane. The child 
must live through the lower stages successfully if it would 
arrive at the highest." 

In some American schools children of six are led to live 
for a few months through a period of primitive life, — 
really to live not simply to read it, or to study about it as 
they do in formal school courses. A boy in one of these 
schools lives through the hunter period, represented, per- 
haps, by Indian life with Hiawatha for his hero. He wants 
to be just like his hero, brave not foolhardy, uncomplain- 
ing, truthful, and to feel a kinship with plant and animal 
life. His concrete ideal comes to him in many associations 
to show him how to act. The thought, "If I lie, the teacher 
will punish me" may come to mind when needed to hinder 
a lie, but if he is sure she will not find it out, he is likely 
to lie with impunity. Compare this last motive with the 
motive furnished by the Hiawatha ideal, "Hiawatha always 
told the truth. I want to be just like him," as to which 
is the more adequate, lasting, and worthy. 

Later the boy, while he is recapitulating their epoch, 
lives freely through other typical periods of primitive and 
historic life: after the hunter period, the nomadic period, 
taking the Aryan boy for a type with his native myths of 
"Cinderella," "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Jack the Giant 
Killer;" the soldier period of the Persian boy, and all the 
other successive periods of Greece, Rome, chivalry, the 



Will 211 

Renaissance, and Puritan and modern history, with all 
their wealth of suggestion for literature, sciences, art, 
formal studies, and bodily training. 

Think of a public school course so planned that the chil- 
dren live, as I have seen them do, through a large number 
of periods and lofty ideals chosen thus from history and 
the literature of power. How inestimable a wealth of 
motives is the result ! Given such a content there is some- 
thing to which to appeal when a child does make mistakes 
or misjudgments. Now a direction or suggestion as to con- 
duct tinds few relations in the mind of the average school 
child— he obeys a direction to please the teacher, perhaps, 
but his conduct in general has not that initiative quality 
that comes from knowing the best, from a complete famil- 
iarity, saturation even with a concrete ideal adequate to 
all the needs of his age, individual and social. 

And try to realize, also, the gain in character that re- 
sults to the children from loving their work, from the 
spontaneity of their effort, and from all the richness, hap- 
piness, grace, and charm that belong to such a school life, — 
thus led the children, indeed, ' ' have life more abundantly. ' ' 

The caustic critic's phrase, the "flabby goodness of imi- 
tation or the hysteric virtue of suggestion" does not at all 
fit the conduct of one whose heart is thus filled with high 
ideals, for, as he has advanced from year to year through 
the changing race ideals, ideals always the creation of his 
spontaneous instincts and interests as his life recapitulates 
the periods, an accumulation for will, a habit of living, a 
"second nature," and a "higher heredity of wisdom and 
virtue" have been built up which are the highest type of 
morally trained character. 

II. So much for the suggestions of psychology for 
schools; now as to a few matters practical in will-training 
for the individual : 



212 Lessons in Psychology 

Is it possible and advantageous to make quick, and at the 
same time, wise decisions'? Can you train yourself to this 
habit in any way? Study different people for differences 
in decision, firmness, thoroughness, self-reliance, respon-' 
sibility in improving opportunities, capacity for sustained 
effort, and the attitude toward discouragements. 

" * * * if there is any one thing of which our indus- 
tries and practical arts are in more crying need than an- 
other, it is the old-fashioned virtue of thoroughness, of a 
kind and degree which does not address merely the eye, 
is not limited by the letter of a contract, but which has 
some regard for its products for their own sake, and some 
sense for the future. Whether in science, philosophy, 
morals, or business, the fields for long-ranged cumulative 
efforts are wider, more numerous, and far more needy than 
in the days when it was the fashion for men contentedly 
to concentrate themselves to one vocation." (G. S. Hall.) 

"It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction 
about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae, which 
will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, con- 
centrate their energies, do the thing." (No. 25, Four- 
Track Series.) 

"Energy of will * * * can only gradually be de- 
veloped by means of persistent actual will -attempts and 
will-actions * * *. An Argonautic expedition, a lion 
hunt in Central Africa, the ascent of the Gross Glockner, 
a north pole expedition— all these are executed, but the 
preservation of untarnished honor and of clear conscience 
upon the Argonautic Journey of human life is a task which 
summons up the full will-power of man." (G. A. Lindner, 
"Empirical Psychology.") 

In training the will in connection with the small duties 
of daily life, an important consideration is the beginning 
places, — it is easy enough to do things when one is once 



Will 213 

started. With an understanding of this difficulty, one can 
go about its correction intelligently. Practice, then, "in- 
stant actualization." One does not need to make up ar- 
tificial conditions to train the will here, for surely every 
one has daily and hourly opportunity to overcome pro- 
crastination. Of all subtle sappers of strength of will, 
this one is perhaps the subtlest as well as the most 
fundamental. 

It is necessary, however, to observe a few cautions in the 
practice of "instant actualization." One is, remember that 
the impulsive idea is always an idea of the wise thing to 
be done— hurried action, then, is not possible. Nor is it 
possible to be nervous, fussy, over-alert, or over-exacting 
with one's self or others. A morbid attitude toward life 
is always to be avoided, such an attitude as sometimes drives 
one, though already fagged, to continue work, when the 
only reasonable thing to do is to relax. So few people in 
mature life who are "bearing the burden and heat of the 
day" know how and when to relax, to rest! Which is 
worse, to take one's self too seriously or not seriously 
enough ? 

To one who, through formalism and familiarity with 
platitudes, has become lukewarm and lackadaisical in the 
practice of the homely virtues of the will, there sometimes 
comes something of renewed inspiration, stimulus, and 
enthusiasm in the comprehension of conduct as a science, 
in the realization that here as inevitably as in chemistry do 
results follow causes, that not only all laxness but all effort 
as well counts. Whether one thing or another is done, it 
will not indeed "all be the same in a hundred years." 



INDEX 



Abstraction, an activity of mind, 139. 

Action, physical, related to the stream of thought, 158. 

Apperception, Chapter V, 102; defined, 105; in Attention, 161. 

Application Step of a Lesson, deductive in method, 148; neglected in 
teaching, 148; Illustrated, 149; Suggestions for, 151. 

"Ark" Teaching, 142; examples of, 143; objections to, 143; from the 
standpoint of Induction and Deduction, 148. 

Associations, Chapter I, 7; how to trace, 7; Law of, 10; Analysis 
of, 18; and habit, 10, 15; in Education, (21 , 26:) Identical Elements 
in, 11; Multiple, 16; Reading defined in the terms of, 11; Sensa- 
tions in, 11; Similarity defined in the terms of, 12; Stream of 
Thought from the standpoint of, 7; in Sleep, 10; Value of, 21; 
which are Correlations, 21; defined, 26; our condition without, 26. 

Atomic Theory, of assistance in understanding the theory of Sensations, 
30. 

Attend, relative strength of motives to, 163. 

Attention, Lesson on, 153; an act of, analyzed, 154; defined, 155 
physical accompaniment of, 157; Control of. Lesson on. 160 
What makes the difference in ability to control the, 161 
process of securing control of, 164fjf; governed by racial interests, 
163; difference between a child and an adult in, 160. 

Brain, in Associations, 10; in memories, 87. 

Character, in Associations and, 21; Lesson on, 203; influence on, 
of effective ideals, 203; outgrowth of the stream of thought, 207; 
generalizations ineffective in training, 208; school to train, 209; 
need for training, 212. 

Color, What precedes a sensation of, 41. 

Colors, Naming makes a difference in number of, known, 47. 

Concentration not the end in training the attention, 165. 

Concept, logical, referred to, 140, cannot be defined, 139,140; psycholog- 
ical, 140; in education, 140. 

Conception, in Thought, Lesson on, 134; analysis in, 136. 

Concrete, process of making, the opposite of abstraction, 139. 

Conduct, as a science, inspiration from the conception of, 213. 

Correlations, 21. 



216 Index 

Deduction, Lesson on, and Induction, 145; defined, 146; contrasted 
with Induction, 147; a process of Inference, 147; Applications of, 
147ff. 

Definition, defined, 139. 

Desires, Lesson on, 196; defined, 198; without belief in attainability, 
become vain wishes, 198; force of beUef in connection with, 200ff. 

Discipline, formal, 89, 99; mental, of school subjects, 99. 

Distance an inference from sight, 46, 75. 

Drawing, Its value, 42. 

Duty, always pleasurable, 194. 

Education from the standpoint of Associations, 21,26; from that of 
Thought, 141; defined in terms of Interests, 195; process of sub- 
stituting reasoned for instinctive acts, 205. 

Extension, analysis of changes in, of a term, 136ff; defined, 139; of our 
ideas important in life, 144. 

Feelings, Lesson on. 190; defined, 192; resultant of bodily condition, 192. 

Flavor distinguished from taste, 52; what precedes a sensation of, 54. 

Foods analyzed in the terms of sensations, 50. 

Forgetting in the terms of Associations, 17; from the standpoint of 
brain physiology, 88; from the standpoint of consciousness, 89. 

Formal Discipline, 89. 

Formalism, objections to, 100; not educative, 109. 

Generalization, an activity of mind, 139; involves both induction and 
deduction, 146. 

Generalizations in process of becoming axiomatic, 146. ^ 

Growth, nature of mental, 105. 

Habit, retention a, 83; Law of, in Memory, 85. 

Harmony, made possible, 38. 

Heredity, race retention, 86. 

Hunger, true beginning of genetic psychology, 61. 

Identical Elements in Trains of Associations, 11. 

Ulusions, 78. 

Imaginations, instances of, in writers, 171; in daily life, 172; effects of 
lack of power in, 172; Cultivating, Lesson on, 172; mental content 
makes the difference in, 172ff; in primitive life, 174; What is de- 
manded of schools in the training of, 175; predominant mode of 
thought in childhood, 175,179; value of, in education, 178ff; in 
schoolbooks, 181. 

Imaging and Imagination, Lesson on, 168; contrasted, 169; instances of, 
in artists, Puvis de Chavannes and Mr. Low, 170; value of, in daily 
fife, 176; difference that acting it out makes in, 177. 



Index 217 

Induction, Lesson on, and Deduction, 145; defined, 146; contrasted 
with Deduction, 147; a process of Inference, 147. 

Inference, both Induction and Deduction are, 147,79. 

Inferences in Perception, 73; in higher thought, 79. 

Instincts in will action, 188, 205. 

Intension, analysis of, changes that take place in, of a term, 136ff ; defined, 
139,141; of our ideas, important in life, 144; sources of, 144. 

Intensity of sound, 38. 

Interests, strength of, 195; Education defined in terms of, 195. 

Joints, sensations of, 56. 

Judgments in Reasoning, defined, 126; in Attention, 155. 

Learning, Lesson on, 106; defined in the terms of Apperception, 108; 
in school, 108; difference that the nature of secondary material 
rearranged in, makes, 109; The logical order of scientific classi- 
fication not always the psychological in, 147. 

Lesson Unit, Lesson on, 116. 

Matter, a group of properties all of which are sensuous, 69; the 
construction of mind, 69, 70. 

Meaning of words, 140. 

Memories, Chapter IV, 80; value of, 95; involved in will action, 
186. 

Memory, no formal training of, 95; In what sense it can be trained, 
96ff; qualities of a good, 96. 

Method, psychological, defendea, 114. 

Multiple Associations, 16. 

Muscular coordination and mental development, 90. 

Muscular sense, 55; Organs, 58; Objects, 58; Knowledge, 58. 

Musical Training, in schools, value of, 140. 

Myth, value of, in education, 179ff. 

Nervous System in connection with Sensations, 29; in connection with 
Memories, 83. 

New, what is, in experience, 104. 

Object, the relation between, and Perception, 70. 

Observation, Training "The Powers of," Lesson on, 122; no formal 
training of, possible, 123. 

Odors of little importance in art, 55. 

Organic sensations, 59; What precedes, 56; different classes of, 59. 

Outer order of stream of thought, 68; no difference in kind between 
inner and, 70,71. 

Perception, Chapter on, 63; Analysis of an act of, 65; defined, 66; dis- 
tinguished from sensation, 67; Metaphysics of, 70;the relation of , to 
objects, 70; not capricious, 72; sciences defined in the terms of, 73. 



218 Index 

Physical training, importance of, in will, 205, 208. 

Pitch of sounds, 38. 

Play, value of, 78; 78. 

Pleasure in school work, gain from, 211. 

Preparation Step in a lesson, reasons for, 117; Suggestions for, 119; 

Inductive in method, 148. 
Presentation Step in a lesson, suggestions for, 120; Inductive in Method, 

148. 
Pressure sensations, 56. 
Proposition in Reasoning, defined, 126; kinds of, 132; in Attention, 

155. 
Psychology not concerned with the metaphysics of Perception, 

69. 
Quality of sounds, 39. 
Reading, defined in the terms of Associations, 11; defined in the terms 

of Apperception, 106. 
Recognition, in Memory, 91; Definition of, 92; Evolution of the pro- 
cess of, 94. 
Reproduction, in Memory, 86; defined, 87. 
Retention, in Memory, 80; not mental, but physical, 83; defined, 83; 

perfect, 83. 
Sciences, defined in the terms of Perception, 73. 
Searchlight, illustrates the action of the Mind in Perception, 69. 
Self-Control, process of gaining, one of Attention, 167. 
Sensations, Chapter II, 29; kind, in associations, 11; defined, 33; 

effects of, in Attention, 164. 
Senses, Training of, 48,49. 

Shape of objects an inference from the grouping of colors, 75. 
Sight, Sense of, 41; Objects of the sense of, 42; Medium of, 43; 

Organ of, 43; Knowledge from, 44; Correspondences between 

sound and, 45; distance, size, and shape inferences from, 75. 
Similarity defined in the terms of Associations, 12. 
Size of objects an inference from the grouping of colors, 46,75. 
Sleep, Associations in, 10. 
Smell, Sense of, 50; what precedes a sensation of, 50; Organ of, 52; 

Objects of, 53; Knowledge from, 53. 
Sound, what precedes sensations of, 35; Objects of, 36; media for, 

36; Organ of, 37; Knowledge from, 38; noisy and musical, 38; 

Pitch of, 38; Intensity of, 38; Volume of, 39; Quality of, 39; Sense 

of, extended, 40; correspondences between color and, 45. 
Strain, sensations of, 56. 



Index 219 

Stream of Thought, from the standpoint of Associations, 7; the result- 
ant of bodily condition, 33; made of sensational elements, 34, 66; 
a unit, 34, 63; not static, 67; Will, one aspect of, 67, 184; a succession 
of outer and inner experiences, 70; from the standpoint of Mem- 
ories, 90; in Apperception, 105; an individual matter, 102; similar 
in two different persons, 103; Under the aspect of Attention, 155; 
simultaneous thoughts in, 155; suppressed action, 158, 178; Relation 
between and action, 150; from the standpoint of Will, 185; is tel- 
eological, 185; from the standpoint of Desire, 199, 200; from 
the standpoint of Character, 207. 

Syllogism, The, Lesson on, 125; defined, 127; graphic tests for, 127; 
Terms of, 130; valid, Lesson on, 131; Figures of, 132. 

Taste, Sense of, 50; what precedes a sensation of, 50; Organ of, 51; 
Objects of, 52; Knowledge from, 52; function of, 55. 

Teaching, Lesson on, 111; defined, 113; should follow the child's lead, 
110,115; Educative only when, 121; Value of a knowledge of the 
psychology of, 114. 

Temperature, sense of, 55. 

Thought, Chapter VI, 125; defined, 140; never adequate, 141; an in- 
dividual matter, 142; rapidity of, 156. 

Time in perception, 64, 66. 

Touch, what precedes sensations of, 31; Lesson on, 55; Organ of, 
57; Objects of, 57; Knowledge from, 57; fears, 61. 

Voices of Americans, 40. 

Volume of Sounds, 39. 

Will, Chapter IX, 184; Action, Lesson on, 184; inherent in the stream 
of thought, 185; analysis of, 185ff ; involves memory, 186; develop- 
ment of, a process of reducing impulses to order, 189; Only rational 
acts are acts of, 189; relation between knowing and doing in, 205; 
relation of muscular training to, 206, 208. 

Wishes, vain, only, left when belief in attainability of desire is destroyed, 
198,199. 



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